678 U.S. NATIONAL ]VIUSEUM BULLETIN 237 paRt 2 



Mississippi (Gulf port), southern Florida (Tortugas), and western 

 Cuba (Havana); casually north to Massachusetts (Newburyport) 

 and Rhode Island (Warren). 



Egg dates. — Labrador: 5 records, June 5 to July 17. 



PASSERCULUS SANDWICHENSIS SAVANNA (WUson) 



Eastern Savannah Sparrow* 



PLATES 38 AND 39 



Contributed by James Baird 



Habits 



Ask ornithologists to think about Savannah sparrows and there is 

 no teUing what mental imagery will be conjured up. One will think 

 immediately of a lush, spring-green meadow visited on a misty May 

 morning; there, the thin song of the Savannah could barely be heard 

 over the more robust songs of the redwing, meadowlark, and bobolink. 

 Then he will remember, with a certain lingering discomfort that 

 same field during the heat of a hot July day. Another will think of 

 sand in his shoes, the roar of the nearby surf, and see once again a 

 Savannah's nest hidden under some flotsam at the base of a Cape 

 Cod sand dune. StiU another bird man will remember cussing out a 

 persistent yellowlegs that yodeUed his alarm from atop a black spruce 

 while he was trying to observe, unseen, a pair of Savannahs on a 

 Labrador sphagnum bog. To the next, to think of Savannah spar- 

 rows will recall a bleak Alaskan tundra, longspurs, jaegers, godwits, 

 lemmings and ice in the coffee pot on a midsummer morning. 



That the Savannah sparrow should be able to evoke such a variety 

 of climatic, geographic, and ecological memories is primarily due to 

 its extensive breeding range, which covers nearly the whole of the 

 North American continent from the arctic circle to the tropics. 

 Throughout this vast range the racial populations form the links in 

 the Savannah sparrow chain. And, just as the links of a chain pass 

 one through the other, most of the racial populations merge into one 

 another at their boundaries, thus creating the intermediates, that 

 are, in part, the reason for considering each to be a part of the whole, 

 rather than specific entities. 



* When dealing with a species that has as many races as the Savannah sparrow, 

 it is sometimes difficult to remember that it is the species that is important. 

 Therefore, the following account deals not only with savanna as a race but more 

 importantly with savanna as exemplary of the species. This seems appropriate 

 because (1) the Savannah sparrow has a long history of taxonomic confusion, 

 which makes it difficult to separate the races in the literature and (2) it seems 

 probable that P. s. mediogriseus Aldrich will eventually be recognized as valid, 

 thus restricting P. s. savanna to the maritime provinces of Canada. 



