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



which are deep enough to furnish shade. I have never walked along 

 this road in summer without flushing several vesper sparrows. I make 

 this statement advisedly, for I have found the birds there at all hours. 

 Early in the morning I have found them feeding. Later in the morning 

 I have seen young birds at play, chasing each other up and down the 

 ruts or squatting on the bare ground, nibbling at grassblades. At noon 

 on hot days, I have watched both young and old birds seek shady spots. 

 At night I have flushed them between the ruts and returned the follow- 

 ing morning to discover little piles of droppings marking the roosting 

 places, as well as the footprints of a fox in the dusty ruts only a few 

 inches away." 



G. M. Sutton comments further that the vesper sparrow "does not, 

 apparently, depend upon a regular water supply either for drinking or 

 for bathing. During the very dry summer of 1936 many species came 

 daily to the spring just south of Colonel George's house — but neither 

 the vesper sparrow nor the grasshopper sparrow was among them." 



Voice. — Aretas A. Saunders sent the following information to Mr. 

 Bent: "The song of the vesper sparrow is sweet and musical. It 

 suggests that of the song sparrow, but has a more definite form. The 

 song in the east rises in pitch and then faUs, the notes when the song 

 rises being rather long and slow, but when the pitch falls the notes are 

 shorter and more rapid. The rising notes are commonly in two pairs, 

 the second pair being higher in pitch than the first. The short notes 

 usually begin on the highest pitch of the song and are commonly in 

 groups of three to five notes, each group lower in pitch than the 

 preceding. The paired notes at the beginning are often downward 

 slurs. My records seem to show that birds of central and western 

 New York begin songs with slurs more frequently than those of 

 Connecticut. 



"The length of songs varies from 2.4 to 4.2 seconds, the average 

 being 3.25. Pitch varies from W to D"". The pitch interval varies 

 from two to six tones, the latter being exactly an octave. 



"Two records from North Dakota and two from South Dakota seem 

 to indicate a difference in the song. The long notes at the beginning 

 are the highest pitch of the song, and the whole song trend is down- 

 ward in pitch, not up and then down. This may be the song of the 

 western subspecies (corifinis), but the Check-List range is rather 

 indefinite about this." 



Enemies. — One is rarely fortunate enough to observe the destruc- 

 tion of a bird's nest or to account for the disappearance of eggs or 

 young. However, E. M. and W. A. Perry (1918) describe finding a 

 garter snake that had caught a fledgling vesper sparrow. Nicholas L. 

 Cuthbert sent the following eye-wdtness account of the destruction of a 

 nest: 



