1348 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 fart 3 



hesitated a little, flew to the hedge where a nestling was perched, and emerged 

 without the straw. I sought out the fledgling, which was crying for food, and 

 found she had laid the straws at its feet! 



About fifteen minutes later, female X brought food to the fledgling * * *. 

 Five minutes later she again flew to the hedge with straws in her beak and this 

 time went straight to the new site. When I looked at the nest that evening, its 

 walls were complete, and a few pine needles and a little fine grass were heaped 

 in the cup. On May 31, just six days after the first brood had left the nest, 

 this female laid the first egg of her second clutch. 



Eggs. — The interval between completion of the nest and the date 

 the first egg is laid is shorter for pugetensis than for nuttalli. For 

 seven records the interval ranged from one to four days and averaged 

 2.6 days, as compared with 3.6 days with a range of one to seven 

 days for 12 records for nuttalli. 



In pugetensis the eggs are laid between late April and late July. 

 The earliest date recorded is April 23 at Eureka, Calif.; the latest 

 date, July 23 at the same locality. (One clutch in the Museum of 

 Comparative Oology collection at Santa Barbara is labeled "Oct. 

 31, 1908" but the condition of the eggs is not given.) At Friday 

 Harbor in 1936 the earliest date for the first egg of a clutch was 

 April 24, the latest, July 4. For first clutches of the season, the 

 median date for 22 females at this locality was Apr. 29-30, 1936. 

 That year one color-banded female laid her first egg on May 1, only 

 one or two days from the median date for the population. The next 

 year she laid her first egg on May 7. If she again came as close to 

 the median date for the population, then in 1937 the median date 

 would have fallen between May 5 and 9. This annual difference, 

 if accurately estimated, would be less than a third as great as the 

 difference in median dates for Nuttall's sparrows the same two 

 years at Berkeley. 



The clutch size in pugetensis averages greater than in nuttalli. The 

 number ranges from three to five, and the average of 90 clutches is 

 3.87, compared with the average of 3.27 for 215 nuttalli clutches. 

 The most common number of eggs per clutch is four, as compared 

 with three in nuttalli. About two-thirds of the clutches in pugetensis 

 had four eggs each, whereas in nuttalli about two-thirds of the 

 clutches had three eggs each. The percentages for pugetensis are as 

 follows: 3 eggs per clutch 23.3 percent, 4 eggs per clutch 66.7 percent, 

 5 eggs per clutch 10.0 percent. The average clutch size for all rec- 

 ords, by month, is as follows: April 3.77, May 3.98, June 3.82, and 

 July 3.25 for 22, 47, 17 and 4 clutches, respectively. 



The second clutch averages larger than the first. Among 22 first 

 clutches of eggs found at Friday Harbor in 1936, 3 had three eggs 

 each, and 19 had four eggs The average was 3.8. Of 7 second 



