EASTERN VESPER SPARROW 871 



may be well bidden by tbe time tbe eggs batcli. Jobn 1j. George 

 (MS.) found the preferred babitat on farmland to be a "hay field 

 giving a yield of one ton per acre," but that "each year several pairs 

 established territories in corn stubble of the previous year, which 

 already had a heavy growth of foxtail, Setaria." 



The vesper sparrow is one of the nesting associates of the Kirtland's 

 warbler {Dendroica kirtlandii), both in plantations of jack pine 

 (Pinus hanksiana) and in areas in which natural growths of jack 

 pines are repopulating biu^ned territory. In Minnesota, T. S. lloberts 

 (1932) 'WTites, "Its favorite haunts are the open, dry uplands, wild 

 or cultivated. In the forests of the north every clearing, old burned- 

 over area, wind-fall, or cut-over region, has its considerable quota 

 of vesper sparrows." 



At Buckeye Lake, Ohio, M. B. Trautman (1940) wTites: "The 

 species mostly nested in short-grass pastures and meadows, and in 

 better-drained fields of short sparse vegetation that were cultivated 

 or fallow. It appeared to avoid heavy viscous clays and concentrated 

 in lighter soils which contained considerable sand and gravel. Be- 

 cause of its preference it was found in greatest nesting abundance on 

 the gravelly and well-drained slopes and tops of glacial moraines south 

 and east of the lake." Trautman adds that "all nests were buUt 

 in small depressions made in the earth by the bird previous to actual 

 nest building," and that "the nests of rootlets and fine grasses w^ere in 

 some instances lined sparingly with cattle or horse hair." E. H. 

 Eaton (1914) also mentions that the nest is "rather loosely constructed 

 of coarse grass and weed stalks, lined with finer grasses, rootlets, and 

 long hair." T. S. Roberts (1932) says that the nest is in some areas 

 "a depression in the ground lined with grasses, and in the north with 

 pine needles." 



Writing of this species at Ellsworth, Maine, Cordelia J. Stanwood 

 (MS.) says that "in my immediate vicinity, the vesper sparrow nests 

 in a meadow that has been under cultivation or used for pastm-age for 

 more than a century, and it breeds in old fields where hay is sparse, 

 fine, and weedy and the ground in many places is covered v\dth sphag- 

 num moss, birdwheat moss, and reindeer lichen; such fields often are 

 grown over in spots witli highland cranberries and blueberries." 



Francis H. Allen (MS.) observes that "one who is familiar with the 

 open fields and pastures with short grass Avhich always seem to be the 

 normal habitat of this species may be surprised to find that it is a 

 common breeding bird in the wide stretches of beachgrass on the sea- 

 shore, where the Savannah sparrow also breeds." 



The nesting season of the vesper sparrow is a long one, extending 

 from about the third week of April to about the middle of August in 

 Michigan, New York, and Ohio, and probably also in Minnesota. 



