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



paratively little is known about its breeding habits, winter behavior, 

 and migration. The bird is so secretive, so nondescript, and so 

 hard to observe that its presence often passes unnoticed. An in- 

 habitant of the drier borders of the larger marshes of central North 

 America, it lives hidden in the grasses and sedges and is seldom 

 seen in jQight. P. B. Peabody (1901) writes of his experiences with it 

 in northwestern Minnesota: 



This weird, mouse-like creature I met in the Red River Valley of Kittson 

 County, Minnesota, on May 27, 1896. Two specimens were taken in a timothy 

 field redeemed from marshy meadow, and swarming at the time with Red-winged 

 Blackbirds, Soras, Western Savanna Sparrows, Wilsons Phalaropes, and Bobo- 

 links, along with the water fowl and other larger birds * * *. One might, for ex- 

 ample, search its familiar haunts day after day during the daytime, at the begin- 

 ning of the period of its arrival in the North, without detecting the slightest 

 evidence of its presence. One must learn just what sort of "cover" is favored by 

 the bird or he will fail to flush it even with minutest search, as the bird, save 

 during the early and the late hours of the day, even in the height of its courtship, 

 is conspicuously silent * * *. I have searched a whole day, on favorable ground, 

 without meeting the bird; while at dusk after starting home, I counted fifteen 

 distinct recurrences of its note along the wayside in going two miles through the 

 meadows. 



Most of its time is spent in the dense dead grass, though it feeds, in the morning 

 and at sunset, where the living grass is scanty. 



Because of its secretive habits and its unimpressive, insectlike 

 song, Le Conte's sparrow has often been and doubtless still is over- 

 looked in many regions where it is fairly common. Of my own 

 early experiences with the species in Chippewa County, Mich., in 

 1935, I (1937) wrote: 



My first impression of Leconte's Sparrow was that it is a very elusive bird. 

 If a male was heard singing and one approached to within fifty to seventy feet, 

 his song would cease. On pacing over the area the bird might be flushed once, 

 when he would fly just over the rushes for about a hundred feet, then drop into 

 the matted masses of dead vegetation where he disappeared completely. But, 

 after several minutes of quiet waiting, the same wheezy song would be heard and 

 the male located in a similar manner. One male was not as wild * * *, but re- 

 mained within a range of twenty feet. On several occasions he was seen sliding 

 underneath a mass of vegetation only eight or ten feet away, then coming out 

 from the other side, craning his neck to see if I was following. If I did follow 

 his incessant chipping, he soon widened the space between us and finally dis- 

 appeared. If I returned to the supposed proximity of the nest-site, he was 

 tlaere to repeat the performance; otherwise he would soon begin to sing. 



In the Munuscong Bay State Park area where the above notes 

 were made, the species inhabited the drier borders of the rush-grown 

 marshes, "where the most conspicuous plant was Scirpus validus 

 (Vahl). During June, the marsh growth consisted almost entirely 

 of this rush; masses of old dead rushes strewed the ground as the past 

 seasons had left them, with new stalks protruding from these masses. 



