LOUISIANA AND TEXAS SEASIDE SPARROWS 841 



AMMOSPIZA MARITIMA (Wilson) 



Seaside Sparrow: Western Gulf Coast Subspecies* 



Contributed by Robert A. Norris 



Habits 



The seaside sparrow populations of the Gulf Coast from extreme 

 western Florida to the marshes of Nueces and Copano Bays in southern 

 Texas represent the races Jisheri and sennetti, the Louisiana and the 

 Texas seaside sparrows. A. m. jisheri occupies most of this range, 

 sennetti being restricted to the environs of the two Texas bays. Both 

 differ from the nominate race, maritima, in the distinct black streaking 

 of their upper parts. Most examples of sennetti are relatively pale 

 and have a unique greenish-gray cast to the upper parts; most Jisheri 

 are darker and browner both above and below. A. m. jisheri differs 

 from the races macgillivraii, pelonota, peninsulae, and juncicola by its 

 conspicuously buffy chest, sides, and flanks, sennetti by its paler and 

 greener coloring above. 



Ludlow Griscom (1944) considered ^^eri the most variable of all 

 the seaside sparrow forms. In a large series of breeding birds he 

 distinguished two color phases, a dark and a light, each "sufficiently 

 distinct so that extreme specimens would be distinguishable in life," 

 and "numerous * * * 'intermediates' " between the two. He also 

 called attention to an apparent correlation between the darker colored 

 seasides and a heavier vegetative cover in their habitats. Fm-ther 

 study of this suspected ecological relationship and of the genetic char- 

 acteristics of the color phases, if any, might well be rewarding. 



In many of the gulf coast marshes seaside sparrows, Hke long-billed 

 marsh wrens (Telmatodytes palustris), are common to abundant birds. 

 Both tend, however, to be rather local in their occurrence (Kopman, 

 1907; Howell, 1928; Burleigh, 1944). Along some stretches of coast 

 the sparrows' spotty distribution is due in part to man's activities. 

 Thus Griscom (1944) notes: "Local observers report it as extirpated 

 at Brownsville, Aransas Pass and Galveston Island by civilization, 

 naval installations, and oil wells." The sparrows are usually strictly 

 coastal in distribution, their range extending inland only where salt 

 marsh is present, such as the pair Simmons (1914) reported nesting in a 

 salt marsh about six miles south of the Houston courthouse, "fully 

 twenty-two miles from Galveston Bay and fifty miles from the Gulf of 

 Mexico." 



One of the principal plants of the marshes harboring these birds is 

 salt grass {Distichlis spicata), which in some areas may be alive with 

 fiddler crabs and littorine snails. Other monocotyledonous plants 



*The following subspecies are discussed in this section: Ammospiza maritima 

 Jisheri (Chapman) and A. m. sennetti (Allen). 



