1410 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 3 



starvation, in the South Atlantic States, but they have increased 

 rapidly during the past three or four seasons and are now nearly back 

 to their normal numbers." 



Ira N. Gabrielson (1952) notes the loss of birds on the north shore 

 of the St. Lawrence in Saguenay County, Quebec, of which H. F. 

 Lewis (MS.) also writes: "The spring of 1947 was notably backward, 

 cold, and late. Great numbers of passerine migrants from the south, 

 including many fox sparrows, perished on the north shore during 

 April and May because they could not obtain sufficient food. I 

 was not there during those months, but in June, after my arrival, the 

 loss of small land birds was described to me by many residents, and 

 the great reduction in the regional breeding population of such birds 

 was impressive." 



L. M. Tuck (MS.) describes losses during a heavy late fall of snow 

 on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland. "On April 14, 1955, fox 

 sparrows were fairly numerous. The following day there was a heavy 

 snowfall with strong easterly winds. We put out chicken feed near 

 our camp and attracted hundreds. * * * We could not feed all of 

 them, however, and a large number perished. Several days later we 

 found similar evidence of high mortality between St. Brides and Cape 

 St. Mary's, where we found 16 dead fox sparrows while walking at 

 random some nine miles. It would seem that the snowstorm coin- 

 cided with the peak arrival of the fox sparrows while they were still 

 on the coast, and consequently there was a rather heavy mortality." 



External parasites recorded from fox sparrows in the eastern Uniteti 

 States include four species of lice (Mallophaga), two of mites, and 

 two of ticks (Peters, 1936). 



Fall and winter. — The fox sparrows start to leave then northern 

 breeding grounds in late August or early September, and most have 

 left Canada by mid-November, though a few occasionally winter in 

 sheltered places, particularly near the coast. The literature shows 

 plainly that the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic coastal states 

 are the principal flyways in fall as they are in spring, and the birds 

 are less plentiful in the more central states. As W. E. C. Todd (1940) 

 notes: "It does not range southward along the Appalachian Highlands 

 as do many Canadian zone species." 



The autumn flocks frequent much the same habitats as in spring, 

 except that they feed more often in open weedy places instead of 

 within thick cover. In the vicinity of New York Eugene P. Bick- 

 nell {in Chapman, 1912) writes: "On its return in the autumn it 

 again becomes a common denizen of hedgerows and thickets, and 

 also invades the weedy grainfields, rarely, however, straying far from 

 some thickety cover. Sometimes large numbers congregate among 

 withered growths of tall weeds, whence they emerge with a loud 



