HARRIS 1 SPARROW 1253 



selves, and dashed off, leaving us to wonder where their nest could be. Frequently 

 we found them feeding in tamarack trees; they appeared to be eating the buds. 

 They were very graceful in their movements, climbing about on the slender, 

 outermost twigs, and bowing this way and that like crossbills. Sometimes a 

 single bird would fly suddenly from the ground under a bush, as if it had just 

 come from a nest. Such a bird usually sought a rather high perch, often the top 

 of a dead spruce near-by, where it would give itself over to a spasm of alarm 

 notes, loud enough to summon all the yammering Lesser Yellow-legs from miles 

 around; then it would dart away, to be seen no more. The habit of the birds, when 

 frightened from the ground, of flying to rather high perches was characteristic. 

 By mid-June, all the birds we observed in the woodlands appeared to be mated. 

 At this season the males so frequently sang in a chorus that it was sometimes 

 difficult to separate a single song from the medley which sounded through the 

 woods. 



On June 15, a bird carrying a wisp of dry grass was observed to go to the ground 

 somewhere near the base of a large spruce stump in a grove of live spruce trees 

 which grew near a small lake and on rather high ground. Though a prolonged 

 search was made, the nest was not found. We were torn, that evening, between 

 high enthusiasm and frank exasperation, for we knew that there must be a nest 

 somewhere in the vicinity and we also knew we had not found it! 



To George Miksch Sutton of the Carnegie Museum-Cornell Uni- 

 versity party fell the honor and good fortune of discovering the 

 first nest. He later describes (1936) in his inimitable style the per- 

 sonal feelings of an ornithologist at such a moment: "As I knelt 

 to examine the nest a thrill the like of which I had never felt before 

 passed through me. And I talked aloud! 'Here!' I said. 'Here 

 in this beautiful place!' At my fingertips lay treasures that were 

 beyond price. Mine was Man's first glimpse of the eggs of the 

 Harris's Sparrow, in the lovely bird's wilderness home." 



Returning to the Semple and Sutton (1932) account: 



The circumstances of the finding were these: After watching a certain pair 

 of birds for a time, the junior author started across a wet, open spruce woods, 

 bound for an area a mile distant which the birds were known to frequent. Just 

 as he entered a clump of comparatively tall spruce trees, he noticed a Harris's 

 Sparrow picking at its belly with its beak, as if it had just come from a nest. He 

 watched the bird for a time without moving, and then deliberately and quietly 

 retraced his steps, marking the spot carefully. After about fifteen minutes he 

 returned briskly, walked noisily through the water, the mossy mounds, and bushes, 

 and, just as he was about to set foot upon the crest of one of the water-bound hum- 

 mocks — he flushed the bird. The nest was less than twelve inches from his foot. 

 The bird flew directly from the nest, without any attempt at feigning injury; 

 it perched on a dead spruce bough about twenty yards away, where it wiped its 

 bill. It gave no alarm note. The bird, a female, was collected at once, to make 

 identification certain. 



The nest, like that found by Ernest Thompson Seton (1908), was lined with 

 grass, and in appearance and location resembled that of a White-throated Sparrow. 

 It was placed a little to the southward of the top of a mossy, shrub-covered, 

 water-girt mound in a cool, shadowy spot, about thirty yards from the edge of a 

 clump of rather tall spruce trees. It was about thirteen inches above the brown 



