LE CONTE'S SPARROW 767 



Intermixed with these were many little willows, mostly about one or 

 two feet in height." 



These sites are frequently flooded during periods of heavy rainfall. 

 The Munuscong nest I found in 1935 was inundated twice, but the 

 birds remained in the vicinity to renest when the water receded. 

 For about the next five years the Munuscong nesting grounds stayed 

 free of deep water. Then they flooded again, and the high water 

 has persisted to this day, forcing the Le Conte's sparrows to desert 

 the area. 



Elsewhere on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I found the species 

 summering regularly on certain drier marshes covered with fine sedges 

 and grasses, often where they were completely surrounded by bog 

 in Luce, Chippewa, and Mackinac counties. In 1935 one or two 

 singing males coidd usually be heard in most of these damp, grass- 

 grown clearings. I also found them on the drier portions of the great 

 Seney Marshes in Schoolcraft County, which has since become the 

 Seney National Wildlife Refuge. After highways were built far 

 out in these marshes I found the species there regularly until 1956. 

 They were there in 1955, but in 1956, though the marshes appeared 

 no difl"erent than before, neither C. J. Henry nor I were able to find 

 a single bird. 



In central Saskatchewan we found the species fairly abundant in 

 similar grassy areas during the summer of 1947. Here again the 

 nesting sites were subject to flooding, often in completely isolated 

 open marshy spots surrounded by coniferous forest. 



Spring. — Le Conte's sparrow apparently migrates through the 

 central portion of the United States in a general north-northwestward 

 direction in spring. At this season, as at other times, it frequents 

 damp open fields and marshes covered with thick grasses and sedges. 

 It is just as hard to flush and flies only a short distance before dropping 

 into the tall protecting grasses. 



Russell E. Mumford tells me (m Htt.) that he finds the species each 

 spring and fall on grassy, damp, marshy areas at Willow Slough Game 

 Preserve, Newton County, Ind. Robert Ridgway (1889) writes that 

 in Illinois this elegant little sparrow is, in some locahties at least, an 

 abundant spring migrant. He noted a specimen taken May 13, 1875, 

 at Riverdale, 111., from a depression in the prairie near the Calumet 

 River, where the moisture had caused an early growth of grass about 

 3 inches high; also that Charles K. Worthen of Warsaw took some 

 20 specimens from low swampy prairies in the Mississippi bottoms, 

 occasionally from dry bluff's, but generally from wet, marshy ground. 



Richard E. Olsen (1935) noted the first arrivals at Munuscong Bay 

 State Park, Mich., on May 11 and 12, 1934. For Minnesota, 

 Thomas S. Roberts (1932) gives the average arrival date as about 



646-737— 68— pt. 2 12 



