1200 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 pau-J- 2 



Griddle, of Manitoba, provides the following list: lambs quarters, 

 Chenopodium album; Russian pigweed, Axyris amaranthoid&s ; redroot 

 pigweed, Amaranthus retrqflexus ; false flax, Camelina microcarpa; 

 tumbling mustard. Sisymbrium altissimum; green foxtail, Seraris 

 viridis. Gary C. Kuyava writes me that in his banding traps clay- 

 colored sparrows eat finely cracked corn, millet, sunflower seeds, bread 

 crumbs, and occasional berries. In early spring they eat wiUow 

 catkins and buds of elms and other trees. In the fall they particularly 

 relish seeds of crabgrass (Youngworth, 1959). 



William Youngworth informs me that this sparrow feeds freely on 

 canker worms in Iowa in the spring. George F. Knowlton (1937b) 

 states that one specimen from Dolomite, Utah, Sept. 21, 1934, con- 

 tained two beet leafhoppers and six false chinch bugs, besides numerous 

 insect fragments. Various observers have reported both adults and 

 young eating large and small insects, including grasshoppers, ants 

 and other Hymenoptera, both adults and larvae of Lepidoptera, also 

 spiders. A. H. Shortt (MS.) states that grasshoppers, abundant in 

 Manitoba during the summers of his study in 1932-1933, were the 

 chief item of food. During the last 4 days of nest life the young 

 received grasshoppers exclusively. 



Behavior. — Dr. Nathaniel R. Whitney writes me that in May in 

 South Dakota the feeding birds remained on the ground with white- 

 crowned sparrows, but when alarmed, or apparently to rest or sing, 

 they flew up into the lower trees, where their most conspicuous as- 

 sociates were the yellow warblers. 



Two instances of hybridization are on record. E. L. Cockrum 

 (1952) lists a hybrid clay-colored and Brewer's sparrow. Robert W. 

 Storer (1954) identified a hybrid clay-colored and chipping sparrow 

 that Almerin D. Tinker coflected in Lo veils, Mich., where the chipping, 

 field, and clay-colored sparrows all occur as breeding birds. 



Mrs. Malcolm (Dorothy Wellington) Mcllroy (1961) describes the 

 association of a singing clay-colored and a chipping sparrow. The 

 nest was in a red cedar tree about 12 feet from the ground in a weed- 

 grown field in a settled residential area in Ithaca, N.Y., in June 1960. 

 The clay-colored visited the nest regularly durmg 3 days while the 

 chipping sparrow was incubating. Arthur A. and David Allen 

 photographed both sparrows feeding three young in the nest on 

 June 23. The fledglings were put in a cage where both adults fed 

 them, but the young soon disappeared for reasons unknown. Mating 

 of the two adult birds was not witnessed. 



That clay-colored sparrows reach the age of five years was proved 

 by Mrs. Hannah R. Gray, who banded one on July 30, 1946 at Wilton, 

 N. D. The bird returned to her traps on June 30, 1947, and agam on 

 July 20, 195L 



