LE CONTE'S SPARROW 771 



tails, being largely insectivorous in the breeding season with a higher 

 percentage of vegetable matter, primarily weed seeds, in winter. 

 David A. Easterla (19G2) reports that the contents of 15 gizzards of 

 birds collected in the spring and fall near Columbia, Mo., contained 

 83 percent vegetable matter, mainly seeds of grasses and forbs, and 

 17 percent animal foods, predominantly leaf hoppers, spiders, and 

 stinkbugs. Apparently the young are fed almost entirely on insects. 

 Those I watched in Michigan were being fed small larvae gleaned 

 from the nearby mareh vegetation. 



Voice. — I (1937) described the song of Le Conte's sparrow from my 

 own notes and the published accounts by others as follows: 



The song of the Leconte's Sparrow is very unimpressive, resembling more the 

 song of some insect than that of a bird. It has been described by many authors. 

 Setou, in "The Birds of Manitoba" (1890, p. 59G) describes the song as "a tiny, 

 husky, double note 'reese-reese' , so thin a sound and so creaky that I believe it is 

 usually attributed to a grasshopper." Roberts, in the "Birds of Minnesota" 

 (1932, 2: 393) gives Breckenridge's impression of the song: "The Leconte's song 

 begins with one short, barely audible, squeaky note, followed by a fine, high, 

 insect-like buzz similar to [that of] the Grasshopper Sparrow and about one second 

 in duration: a tiny, hardly audible 'chip' terminates the effort" (Red River Valley, 

 June 23, 1928). Farley in the "Birds of the Battle River Region" (1932, p. 57) 

 says: "Its soft lisping note, tze, uttered with monotonous frequency as the bird 

 clings to a tall grass stem, sounds more like an insect than that of a bird." 



The song when near at hand to me sounds like z-z-z-htizzzz, and lasts by the 

 stop-watch 0.015 of a minute in duration, which is approximately one second as 

 stated by Breckenridge. The first part of the song reaches its shrillest just at 

 the close, when it can be heard for some distance. It is much higher pitched than 

 that of the Savannah Sparrow, heard in the same wet meadows, yet the song of 

 the Savannah lasts nearly three times as long. Often, when in the blind, another 

 song was heard, sometimes alone, again preceding the regular insect-like buzz. 

 This song has been described by Peabody as "a dry, creaky e' elree-e' elree-e' elree- 

 e'elree." He adds: "This note must be rarely indulged in, as I recall having 

 heard it but twice." It is not uttered nearly as often as the other more common 

 song. This song resembles a similar one of the Grasshopper Sparrow (Am- 

 modramus savannarum australis), and like the song of the latter, it is more often 

 followed by the regular buzzing song. 



Very seldom have I observed the bird utter the song more than a foot from the 

 ground. Once, while crossing near the supposed nesting-site, a male suddenly 

 flew into the air with quivering wings, and while maintaining a stationary position, 

 uttered his regular song, then dropped again to the dead rushes. The procedure 

 was much like the one often given by the Prairie Marsh Wren. 



Although I was not awake all of the hours of darkness, the male was heard to 

 sing as early as 3 a.m. and as late as 10:30 p.m., long after dark here in Michigan. 

 From my cabin door I could easily hear it. For a period of fifteen minutes 10 to 

 10:15 p.m. on June 16, 1935, I timed his songs with a stop-watch and he repeated 

 the song at the rate of ten times per nu'nute, excepting for one minute when it 

 was repeated nine times. At dawn it was repeated at about this same rate. 

 For thirty minutes between 1:45 and 2:15 p.m., on June 17, it was repeated the 

 following number of times per minute: 7,0,6,7,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,5,6,5,0,0,2,1,0,5, 

 5,0,7,4,0,0 and 0. This was at about the regular rate for the middle of the 



