1282 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 3 



themselves catch flies, mosquitoes, and spiders, as everyone who has 

 studied them has noticed. In winter they are primarily seed eaters, 

 and in spring or any other time these are available, they take fleshy 

 fruits such as the red mulberry or the crowberry. 



Behavior. — The white-crown has long had the reputation of being 

 an aristocrat among the Emberizines. His neat attire, striking 

 crown, and his habit of stretching his head upward to look around 

 have probably combined to earn him this title. 



But nobility should imply natural dominance. It was not until 

 I saw white-crowns nesting adjacent to white- throated sparrows at 

 Redmond Lake south of Schefferville, Quebec, that I realized that the 

 white-crown is more mousy than regal in bearing, at least in summer. 

 I found white-throats more deliberate, less upset by intrusion, their 

 alarm notes a quiet announcement of awareness, and their flights 

 shorter. White-crowns, on the other hand, were much more high- 

 strung, always running while on the ground — even if they did this 

 by hopping with both feet — and their alarm notes were more insistent, 

 sharp, or nervous. These differences have an environmental basis, 

 as the white-crowns occupy open country where they are more 

 exposed to potential enemies and pressed by the wind, whereas the 

 white-throats occupy the sheltered brushy borders of the closed- 

 crown, Canadian-zone woodland that here reaches a northern limit. 



This demeanor changes on the wintering grounds. Albert F. Ganier 

 of Nashville, Tenn., who has studied their ways since the turn of the 

 century, writes me that in his region the white-crowns remain in com- 

 pact groups of 10 to 20 birds, hugging the same habitat week after 

 week, either in a weed- and brush-grown fence row along some little- 

 frequented road, or in an abandoned piece of farmland where plant 

 succession is throwing up clumps and patches of herbacious and 

 sapling growth. "Here," he writes, "they feed quietly on the ground, 

 but when intruded upon rise to the top of the low growth and eye 

 the intruder with apparent curiosity, rather than with fear. They 

 crane their necks to get a better look and it would appear that they 

 have not yet evolved a fear of man to the extent of most other birds." 

 They are apparently not easily flushed out of these preferred coverts, 

 as are the white-throats that fly ahead of the intruder. 



Woodward H. Brown (1954) was impressed by the aerial feeding 

 of white-crowns and saw them "occasionally spring 15-18 inches 

 in the air, returning to former positions on grape vines, catching 

 gnats or other small insects." 



In Quebec-Labrador I was impressed by the fact that females 

 when disturbed always sneaked off the nest for 10 or 20 feet in a sort 

 of "mouse run," but without the wing-dragging display that shore 

 birds and other species often add before sounding any alarm. On 



