NTJTTALL'S WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW 1297 



pasture for shelter and nest sites. In the same pasture cattle grazed, 

 dogs dug for pocket gophers, and domestic ducks waddled at the edge 

 of the swampy patches. 



In the summer of 1957 I found a similar landscape in Alaska near 

 the cultivated fields of the University of Alaska's Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station. Gambel's sparrows had incorporated the cidtivated 

 land into their nesting territories. They foraged in the fields, roosted 

 in the willow and rose tangles at the edge, and nested in the tall 

 thick grass. Even the details of the scene reminded me forcibly of 

 Nuttall's sparrow country 3,000 miles to the south: I found tracks 

 of cloven-hoofed mammals at the edge of the field, in the distance I 

 saw a pair of small carnivores hunting mice, and ducks moved along 

 in the stubble at the far edge of the cultivated plots. It took con- 

 siderable effort to realize that this was an Alaskan scene, not a Cali- 

 fornia one, that the hoof-prints were those of moose, not cattle, that 

 the carnivores were native red foxes, and that the ducks were wild. 



This second example brings out another characteristic of many, 

 if not most, white-crowned sparrow territories — their close connection 

 with human habitation or with country altered by man. This is a 

 feature not only of territories in the densely populated areas of Cali- 

 fornia, but also of those in many parts of Alaska as well. In 1950 

 I went to Mountain Village, an Eskimo trading post on the lower 

 Yukon, to watch the arrival of Gambel's sparrows. One boundary 

 of the village is the river. Above the village scrub alder and willow 

 merged into upland tundra. There were no roads or cultivated 

 fields. I found arriving Gambel's sparrows carving out territories 

 in the village, beside fish camps, even by the schoolhouse and trading 

 post, and including in their areas the river's edge, which was used by 

 the villagers as a thoroughfare to and from the trading post and as a 

 place to tie their dogs. The undisturbed ground above the village 

 was apparently also suitable for white-crowned sparrows, as a few 

 pairs settled there, but only after all suitable areas in the village had 

 been preempted. 



I persisted in my search for Gambel's sparrows nesting on land in 

 its natural state, and one day I found what appeared to be just such 

 a spot about 6 miles upriver from the trading post. There I found 

 open grassy knolls with bare ground grooved by tiny streams and 

 surrounded by dense scrub alder. Gambel's sparrows were breeding 

 there, and I found no trace of human beings, not even a rusty knife 

 or a fragment of sawed wood. Imagine my dismay when, on describ- 

 ing the spot to the trader that evening, I found that this clearing was 

 all that remained of a once-thriving Eskimo village that had been 

 abandoned about 40 years before! 



