1442 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part s 



knees. We flushed the bird from the indicated spot but found no 

 nest. 



After supper on June 24 Neil Atkinson came puffing into our house, 

 having run the mile from the nest site, to announce that he had 

 succeeded in locating the nest. Immediately we went back with him, 

 and there the nest was, right where we had looked, but set well down 

 into the ground under a pile of last year's brush cuttings. It looked 

 like a little black hole. 



The nest contained three young about a day old and one infertile 

 egg. It was situated 16 feet from the access road into the trout 

 rearing station and 8 feet from the forest edge. The main cover 

 plants were grasses, wild rose, anemones, raspberry, cut off shrubs 

 of dogwood, willow, alder, a little balsam, and brush one or two feet 

 high. Brush cuttings from other years formed an interlacing mat 

 below this new growth, which grew profusely to a height of 1 or 2 feet. 

 The nest measured 3% inches in outside diameter, about 2% inches in 

 inside diameter and about 1% inches deep outside. It was made of 

 dried grasses. As early as June 21 we had searched for this nest but 

 were driven back to the car by mosquitoes. The female at this time 

 was silent while we searched but scolded us when we left off searching, 

 so she was no help. After the young left the nest on June 2, we col- 

 lected the nest and infertile egg and later presented them to the Royal 

 Ontario Museum. 



The following extracts are from the field notes of J. Murray Speirs: 



On May 27, 1957, as I entered the property of the Dorion Trout Rearing 

 Station about 8:00 a.m. E.S.T., two little sparrows flushed from the roadside just 

 west of the Abitibi road and flew toward the alders at the forest edge north of the 

 entrance road to the hatchery. They uttered little 'tit'ing notes characteristic of 

 Lincoln's sparrows and one paused to eye me long enough for me to verify the 

 identification. I thought "This must be Mr. and Mrs. A, the elusive little pan- 

 that occupied this territory in 1956 and raised a family so furtively that we saw 

 nothing of the nesting until one day the young were seen being fed." We sus- 

 pected nesting right by this same corner in 1956 and made a few searches for the 

 nest, but found nothing. 



On May 29, 1957, however, fortune smiled on us. We had finished the morning 

 watch in the hatchery property and were about to leave when a movement 

 caught my eye and we waited. It was a Lincoln's sparrow, sure enough, and 

 IT HAD GRASS IN ITS BILL. So we waited. 



Mrs. A, or to be more formal, L 7 9-1957, flew with her long, dried grasses 

 trailing at each side like the tail of a comet, to the narrow vegetative border 

 between the road and the roadside ditch. She worked along the ditch quickly 

 toward us about eight or ten feet. She stopped briefly by a little clump of 

 assorted bushes. This clump consisted of one sprig of alder with new green leaves 

 about an inch across, several shoots of willow, and a small gooseberry bush, all 

 about a foot high. After her pause here she flew off, without the grasses, directly 

 away from the clump. This was at 7:40 a.m. Three more trips followed in 

 quick succession, the last at 7:45 a.m. Each time she flew to the roadside border 

 of the ditch and worked along the ditch, usually several feet toward the nest. 



