LARK SPARROW 893 



As the young grow, the adults increase the tempo of theu- feeding 

 until toward the end of the fledging period they may feed the j^oung 

 every few minutes. On June 4 the parents brought food 28 times in 

 an hour to a nest with four 5-day-old young. The female made 19 

 trips, the male only 9, but he seemed to bring more each time than 

 his mate did. Both parents carried fecal sacs away and dropped 

 them from 20 to 80 feet from the nest. I never saw an adult lark 

 sparrow eat a fecal sac. 



Young lark sparrows normally remain in the nest until they are 

 able to fly short distances on the 9th or 10th day after hatching. 

 They can be handled and placed back in the nest until they are 6 days 

 old; when disturbed or handled after 6 days, they usually desert the 

 nest and scramble about on the ground or hide in low vegetation where 

 they can be difficult to find. By surrounding a nest in an Austrian 

 pine on the Biological Station lawn with a half-inch mesh hardware 

 cloth 30 inches high, 1 was able to confine its three young where I 

 could find them and still permit the parents free access. 



One of these young I marked and weighed daily at 7 a.m. from the 

 time it hatched until it fledged. Weighing 2.2 grams at hatching, 

 its gram weights at successive 24-hour intervals were: 3.9, 5.8, 8.7, 

 11.0, 12.9, 14.0, 12.5, 11.8, 12.5. When it reached its greatest weight, 

 at the end of the 6th day, it would no longer stay in the nest. Its 

 weight losses the 7th and 8th days probably reflect its increased 

 activity, for the parents continued to feed it as before. Shortly after 

 it was weighed on the 9 th day, showing an increase, it flew over the 

 fence with its siblings to a shrubby area near by, where the parents 

 continued to care for the brood. All were flying too well to be caught. 



Largely because of its long nesting season, lasting in Oklahoma from 

 early ^Ifiy to late July, the lark sparrow generally has been assumed 

 to be double brooded. G. S. Agersborg (1885) states that in North 

 Dakota: "The first brood is raised from nests placed in unplowed 

 fields; the second or third are generally built among potato vines or 

 vegetables with heavy foliage. Have no doubt that three broods are 

 often raised." E. S. Cameron (1908) writes from Montana: "I have 

 also seen eggs in July, but these were doubtless for a second brood." 

 M. G. Brooks (1938) concludes on the basis of finding a nest on July 

 8 that the species raises two broods in West Virginia. These and other 

 similar assumptions in the literature are questionable, because none 

 is based on definite evidence from observations of marked birds. 



While my observations on double-broodedness at Lake Texoma 

 were perhaps inconclusive, I obtained no definite proof of its occur- 

 rence and considerable evidence against it. Tlie nesting attempts, 

 successes, and failures of a number of color-banded females in the 

 study area showed those that built nests in July had had one or more 



