ASHY RUFOUS-CROWNED SPARROW 949 



latest dates, no definite evidence of a pair renesting after successfully- 

 fledging a brood has been published. William Leon Dawson (1923) 

 merely makes the unsupported statement "one or two broods" for 

 the species. 



Efjgs. — The eggs of this race apparently do not differ materially 

 from those of the nominate subspecies. 



Incubation. — No one seems to have determined the incubation 

 period for this sparrow. The nest that Harriet W. Myers (1909) 

 observed so carefully near Los Angeles held three eggs when first 

 found on April 10, the female "brooding" and allowing approach to 

 ^nthin 3 feet before flying away. As these eggs all hatched between 

 late afternoon of April 15 and the morning of April 16, incubation 

 evidently does not start until the last egg is laid. 



Mrs. Myers' notes on the behavior of these birds on April 11 and 

 13 are the most accurately pinpointed of any I have seen on the breeding 

 cycle. At 10 a.m. April 11, when observations began, there was no 

 adult seen, but one appeared at 10:23 a.m. and gave a high-pitched 

 scolding note. This bird went onto the nest at 10:49 a.m. and gave 

 a low sit call from the nest in answer to the high-pitched alarm call 

 trom a second bird upslope, presumably the male of the pair. The 

 sitting bird left at 11:33 a.m., called dear dear, preened momentarily 

 near by, and then flew uphill out of sight. At 11 :55 a.m. she returned 

 and perched on a pole back of the nest. After the observer moved 

 back she went onto the nest again at 11:59 a.m. and remained there 

 steadily for at least the next hour and 31 minutes. On April 13, 

 when observations began at 1:12 p.m. the bird was "brooding," in 

 the next hour and 46 minutes "not once turning or moving. When 

 she left the nest she did so quietly, slipping through the grass, then 

 onto a bush, and from there flying directly up the hillside, a route 

 she invariably took." Upon the bird's return 29 minutes later, she 

 again went to the nest only after the observer moved more than 10 

 feet away. 



Young. — Mrs. Myers (1909) watched the nest described above 

 after the young hatched on April 16 until the morning of April 23 

 when the nest was found robbed. No other account of this phase of 

 the breeding cycle seems to have been published, and the excerpts 

 below are entirely from Mrs. Myers' (1909) article. April 17, late 

 afternoon: 



In ten minutes an old bird came to a nearby bush, an inch-long green worm dan- 

 gling from its bill. I was about ten feet from the nest. After giving the plaintive 

 call-note twice the bird carried the worm to the nest. From where I stood I 

 could not see just how this worm was fed and in my effort to get a better view 

 the bird flew out, a small part of the worm still in the bill. The mate had almost 

 immediately followed the first bird to the nest and when the first one flew out this 

 other one went at once to the nest with his bill filled with a small dark-looking 



