McCOWN'S LONGSPUR 1589 



The male and female manifest an unusual degree of attachment for one another. 

 While watching them feeding in the early morning, for they were very unsuspi- 

 cious and would allow me to approach within a few yards of them, I noticed that 

 they kept close to one another, generally walking side by side. If one ran a few 

 steps from the other to secure an insect or a seed, it returned to the side of its 

 mate almost immediately. 



On one occasion, a pair were startled from the ground while thus occupied, and 

 I shot the female. As she fell, the male which was a few feet in advance, turned 

 about, and flew to the spot where she lay, and, alighting, called to her in emphatic 

 tones, evidently urging her to follow him. He remained by her side until I shot 

 him. 



Nest tenacity, developed to a high degree in the female of this 

 species, is described by Raine (Macoun, 1908), DuBois (1937a) and 

 Mickey (1943). "The female is a close sitter, not leaving the nest 

 until the intruder has stepped close up to it," declares Raine. 



Mickey (1943) remarks on the bird's awareness of the human gaze. 

 "I was standing less than a foot from the incubating bird when I saw 

 her. Not until I looked directly at her did she fly." 



DuBois (1937b) describes a female apparently employing pretended 

 food hunting as a distraction display. "After I had flushed her from 

 the eggs, and had been seated for some time at the nest, she approached 

 and deported herself very much as do the larks, running in the grass 

 and pretending to hunt food, while she watched me." 



Both male and female sometimes display remarkable intrepidity. 

 DuBois (1923), taking pictures and having his camera set up near 

 the nest, was surprised at the male's lack of concern. "He now per- 

 mits me to sit at the camera, which is only three or four feet from him, 

 as he stands or sits on his brood." 



At a pond in north central Montana in 1911 Saunders (1912) 

 found horned larks and McCown's longspurs feeding about the edge, 

 "the longspurs walking daintily over the green scum at the edge and 

 eating the small insects that swarmed there. Several young long- 

 spurs, barely able to fly, were here with their parents, and one such 

 had evidently come to grief in its efforts to imitate its parents' example, 

 and was drowned in the midst of the scum." 



In eastern Alberta, A. L. Rand (1948) saw McCown's longspurs fly in 

 "commonly to drink at the irrigation reservoirs, along with horned 

 larks and the chestnut-collared longspurs." 



G. B. Grinnell (Ludlow, 1875) asserted that he "did not see these 

 birds hop at all. Their mode of progression was a walk rather hur- 

 ried, and not nearly so dignified as that of the cow-bunting [brown- 

 headed cowbird]." 



Where Grinnell in 1874 found this species "unsuspicious" and fairly 

 easy to approach on the prairies of southwestern North Dakota, Bailey 

 and Niedrach (1938) in 1936 and 1937 found them "extremely wild" 

 in northeastern Colorado. 



