EASTERN FOX SPARROW 1401 



beaches, and on the wooded hills." William Brewster (,1883) also 

 found it on the Magdalens and adds: "It was particularly abundant 

 at Fox Bay, Anticosti, where its favorite haunts were impenetrable 

 thickets of stunted firs and spruces near the coast. It also occurred 

 plentifully in the heavier forests of the interior, especially about 

 openings." When Frank W. Braund and E. Perry McCullagh 

 (1940) visited Fox Bay in 1937, upwards of 50 years after Brewster's 

 visit, they saw only six fox sparrows in the same area during their 

 two-week stay from June 16 to July 1. While the dwarfing of vege- 

 tation under subarctic conditions ensures a degree of permanence to 

 fox sparrow habitats, ecological changes are probably partly respon- 

 sible for local population fluctuations. 



In Labrador Leslie M. Tuck (MS.) states the fox sparrow "seems 

 to prefer scrub spruce and rather thin spruce-fir forests, but also occu- 

 pies the pockets of black spruce on the barrens, or caribou range, the 

 fringes of swamps, and even deciduous forests in the river valleys." 

 T. H. Manning and A. H. Macpherson (1952) observed the species 

 most often on the eastern coast of James Bay from June 28 to Aug. 

 28, 1950, where alder patches and open or stunted spruce were mixed 

 together on dry, rocky ground. Farther north near Great Whale 

 River on the east coast of Hudson Bay, Douglas B. Savile (1950) 

 found the fox sparrow "abundant, especially in slightly wet areas with 

 Labrador tea {Ledum) and other low shrubs and a few spruces." 



Nesting. — John J. Audubon (1834) was the first ornithologist to 

 find the fox sparrow on its breeding ground. He describes its nest 

 on the southern Labrador coast as built on the ground among the 

 mosses and tall grass, and says that the eggs are laid from the middle 

 of June to the fifth of July. "When one approaches the nest, the 

 female affects lameness, and employs all the usual arts to decoy him 

 from it." 



While the nest is most commonly on the ground, it may also be 

 built above it in a bush or tree, and it is always well screened from 

 view. The male indicates its general location by his singing, and the 

 loud alarm tchek from one or both birds usually tells one the nest is 

 close by. Ground nests in thickets may be in plain view when one 

 reaches them, as behind the tangle of interlaced branches that thwart 

 one's advance into the thicket, there is no need of elaborate conceal- 

 ment under a tuft of grasses in the manner of the song sparrow, and 

 usually little or no grass grows beneath such dense cover. One 

 such nest with two fresh eggs I found in Saguenay County July 1, 1925, 

 in a slight ground cavity under a stunted white spruce tangle was 

 composed of plant stems and moss and fined with withered grasses. 

 It was much less bulky and contained none of the twigs that normally 

 compose the walls of tree nests. 



646-737 — 68— pt. 3 11 



