668 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 2 



at Gilgo on Jones Beacb. Here crab grass (Digitaria) was plentiful. 

 Tbe birds fed by manipulating tbe seed beads, picking oft' and swallow- 

 ing the seeds as tbe stems passed tbrougb tbe mandibles. Beach 

 goldenrod, Agrostis, and Andropogen are among the plants this species 

 was observed to feed upon. Once I watched an Ipswich sparrow 

 feeding in a patch of salt grass {Spartina patens) . 



In New Jersey during the winter of 1940, Julian Potter counted 14 

 Ipswich sparrows near Stone Harbor along the shoulders of the "Sea 

 Gull" highway. Driven off the low dunes by an extremely high tide, 

 they were scattered for about three-quarters of a mile on both sides 

 of the road, and were feeding along the grassy and weedy edges with 

 many Savannah and several sharp-tailed sparrows. When approached 

 they flew short distances and again alighted on the borders of the road. 



Roy Latham states that in times of deep snow at Orient, I^ong 

 Island, Ipswich sparrows enter the tracts of high tide bush (Iva) and 

 feed on its seeds. W. Earl Godfrey took a winter specimen in Nova 

 Scotia on Feb. 2, 1929, in an area where a system of dikes keeps the 

 salt water out of the hay meadows. He writes me: ''As you know 

 snow usually blows off the top of these dikes, which average about 

 6-8 feet in height. This Ipswich sparrow was feeding on weed seeds 

 (unfortunately I do not now know what kind) . There are no dunes in 

 that area. An autumn bird I collected was on the flat, hay meadows 

 behind the dikes and separated from salt water by them." 



One shot at Lawrencetown, near Halifax, Nova Scotia, around the 

 end of March 1878, was feeding on bent grass (Agrostis). Regarding 

 its feeding in South Carolina, Alexander Sprunt, Jr., writes me that 

 "as to the food on this coast, I am convinced (and so was Wayne) 

 that its mainstay is seeds of the sea-oats (Uniola paniculata).^' 



During the summer of 1948 Ipswich sparrows on Sable Island were 

 observed to feed largely on the ground, often in damp, boggy tracts 

 where they picked up both seeds and insects. I saw one bird pluck 

 the center out of a seeding flower of the silver-weed (Potentilla an- 

 serina). Fecal matter examined consisted largely of animal matter, 

 principally remains of beetles. 



The few Ipswich sparrows that winter on Sable Island come regu- 

 larly to bread crumbs and other food the inhabitants put out for them. 

 R. S. Boutillier, superintendent of Sable Island station for many years, 

 made a practice of feeding the Ipswich sparrows in winter. Captain 

 Patrick Solawan, superintendent during my 1948 visit, wrote me that 

 he and his family fed them regularly during the winters of 1948-49 and 

 1949-50. In Dwight's and Sanders's time, the Ipswich sparrow was 

 the only resident land bird on the island. Unfortunately, the English 

 sparrow, arriving about 1930, is now resident there, and although not 



