MISSISSIPPI SONG SPARROW 1521 



each of 5 years one banded male sang for periods lasting 40 to 65 

 days. The character of the autumn singing differed little from that 

 of the height of the nesting season, except that there were more 

 incomplete songs. 



The fall migration of the transients in central Ohio takes place in 

 late September and throughout October. Summer resident females 

 left by the middle of October, males a little later. Bleak weather 

 tended to hasten migration, mild weather to delay it or even occasion- 

 ally to supress it. 



Winter. — Resident song sparrows stay on or near their territories 

 throughout the year, although they do not defend them in winter. 

 At this season they may range over an area 6 to 10 times as large as 

 their breeding territories. In cold spells they sometimes come more 

 than a quarter of a mile to a feeding station. In snowy weather they 

 assemble in loose flocks which are neither family parties nor neigh- 

 borhood groups, as they are composed of both residents and winter 

 residents. (Families break up at the end of the nesting season.) 

 The resident males start their singing and take up territories during 

 warm weather in late January or early February, but a return of 

 winter brings a return to winter behavior. 



I never had a recovery away from Interpont of the 870 birds banded. 

 A song sparrow banded June 8, 1932 near Cleveland, Ohio, was taken 

 in Janesboro, Ga., Dec. 25, 1933. 



[Note. — Because Mrs. Nice's account of euphonia is essentially a 

 summary of her banding study of an Ohio population, it is desirable 

 to add a word about the race in other places, and especially in the 

 Appalachian Mountains. Indeed, the old vernacular name Missis- 

 sippi Song Sparrow was rejected by some (see Burleigh, 1958) as being 

 less appropriate than "Appalachian Song Sparrow." — V.N.] 



Arthur Stupka (1963) writes that this race is common in the lower 

 altitudes of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park but breeds 

 at any heights there. The habitat above 6,000 feet is "brushy open- 

 ings in these moist highlands." In the mountains of Georgia, on 

 the other hand, Burleigh (1958) states that the bird is fairly common 

 in "thickets and underbrush in the valleys. It has no liking for thick 

 woods and will never be seen on mountainsides or in wooded ravines." 



Interestingly, both the foregoing authors have noted an extension 

 of euphonia' s range. It appears to have moved into the high altitudes 

 in only recent years, and Stupka discusses the possibility that large- 

 scale habitat changes attributable to lumbering and chestnut blight 

 have thinned the forest overstory and produced the changed distri- 

 bution of the bird. In Georgia, the breeding range of the species has 

 been extended even more markedly. "Less than fifty years ago, it 

 was not known to breed in Georgia * * * (Burleigh, 1958), but by 



