EASTERN SONG SPARROW 1505 



Bird-Banding. Some of the most interesting of these follow: The 

 number of such "recoveries" and "foreign retraps" from a total of 

 3,614 song sparrows banded in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 

 was 12 (Middleton, 1956); from 6,109 banded in Groton, Mass., 7 

 (Wharton, 1953); from over 1,200 banded on Cape Cod, Massachu- 

 setts, 1 (Broun, 1933). Some of the Pennsylvania birds were caught 

 in Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, and New Jersey. The 

 Groton, Mass., birds were caught in Arkansas, South Carolina, 

 North Carolina, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. The Cape Cod 

 bird was caught in South Carolina. May Thacher Cooke (1943) 

 reports a bird banded in Massachusetts and captured in Newfound- 

 land. Wendell P. Smith (1942) caught a bird in Vermont in April, 

 and it was recaptured 90 miles southward in New Hampshire in 

 June of the same year, an interesting case of reversal in the direction 

 of migratory movement. 



Enemies. — Perhaps the most interesting and surely the most well 

 documented hazard in the song sparrow's environment is exposure 

 to the parasitic brown-headed cowbird and bronze cowbird. Herbert 

 Friedmann's latest report (1963) on the cowbirds states that the song 

 sparrow (all races) shares with the yellow warbler the claim to being 

 the most frequently reported host of M. ahr. Friedmann's summary 

 of the relations between all races of the song sparrow and the brown- 

 headed cowbird is quoted substantially in full: 



The song sparrow is one of the most frequent, if not the most frequent, victim 

 of the brown-headed cowbird. Since the former is sympatric with the latter 

 throughout the entire breeding range of the parasite, it is parasitized probably- 

 more often and over a greater area than any other bird. The total number of 

 records is very great. After accumulating over 900, I stopped noting them except 

 for records of special interest. The data came from every province of Canada 

 and every state of the United States included in the breeding ranges of both birds. 

 All three races of the parasite are involved, and no less than 17 races of the song 

 sparrow: melodia, atlantica, euphonia, juddi, montana, inexpectata, merrilli, 

 fisherella, morphna, cleonensis, gouldii, samuelis, pusillula, heermanni, cooperi, 

 fallax, and saltonis. So far, none of the purely Mexican races have been reported 

 as fosterers of the cowbird, but this fact is probably due more to a lack of human 

 observation than to any actual immunity of the bird to cowbird parasitism. 



There is no need to detail actual instances for the various races of the song 

 sparrow since such cases already have been given in my earlier summaries [Fried- 

 mann, 1929, 1934, 1938, 1943, 1949]. However, a few additional records of 

 infrequently reported races of the host species should be mentioned * * * [viz. 

 cleonensis, fallax, morphna, saltonis, samuelis, and inexpectata]. 



In recent years, not only many hundreds of additional cases, but also much 

 more quantitative data on the host-parasite relations have become available. 

 Hicks (1934) found that 135 out of 398 nests (34 percent) of this sparrow were 

 parasitized in Ohio. Nice (1937a***, 1937b***), also in Ohio, reported that 

 98 out of 223 nests (43.9 percent) contained eggs or young of the cowbird (the 

 annual percentage varied from 24.6 to 77.7 percent). Sixty-six unparasitized 

 nests raised an average of 3.4 song sparrows, whereas 28 successful but parasitized 



