CLAY-COLORED SPARROW 1205 



rant County), while other adults are still attending young in Minne- 

 sota as late as August 28 (Lewis, 1943). Florence M. Bailey (1928) 

 states that 'pallida ranges in fall migration to at least 8,000 feet at 

 Black Lake, N.M. L. Irby Davis ^\Tites me that in Texas flocks up 

 to 100 birds sometimes remain in a rather definite territory for some 

 weeks, and sometimes seem to move on ahuost at once. Pie thinks 

 the seed crop may be a causal factor. 



Adolf J. l\j-ehbiel, of Clayton, N.M., has ^\'itnessed large-scale 

 diiu-nal migrations. On the afternoon of Aug. 22, 1954, about 4 

 miles west of Clayton, he and Dr. Neland Gray saw thousands of 

 clay-colored and chipping sparrows continually bounding and tumbling 

 in low wavelets across the open prairie, mo\dng almost straight south. 

 Low fhghts of 50 to several hundred feet by individual birds constantly 

 overlapped each other. The observers estimated the rate of mass 

 movement at about 5 miles per hour. On Sept. 14, 1958, 20 miles 

 northwest of Clayton, the same observers estimated more than 2,000 

 clay-colored sparrows in a general drift southward as they fed upon 

 sunflowers. 



F. C. Lincoln (1939) reports that a clay-colored sparrow banded at 

 Northville, S.D., on May 2, 1934, was found dead at Cuautla, Jahsco, 

 in southern Mexico on Dec. 23, 1934. 



Evidence suggests that in the Great Plains region the main mass 

 of birds may shift westward in fall migration. A. J. Krehbiel wTites 

 me that relatively few clay-colored sparrows visit the Clayton area in 

 the spring. The fall migration there is much longer and noticeably 

 heavier. WiUiam Youngworth ^vl•ites me that at Sioux City, Iowa, 

 the bird is primarily a spring migrant. He has 105 spring records 

 (not individuals) to 13 fall records from 1928 to 1958. John M. Bates 

 (1901) states that S. 'pallida was the commonest bird of the brush 

 on Aug. 25, 1901, at Long Pine, in western Nebraska. 



The clay-colored sparrow is a regular though rare fall migrant along 

 our eastern coast from Massachusetts southward. The first Massa- 

 chusetts specimen record comes from North Eastham, on Sept. 20, 

 1930 (O. L. Austin, Jr., 1931; O. M. Koot, 1952). Paul A. Buckley 

 (1959) writes that "during the past ten years" the clay-colored sparrow 

 has become a regular occurrence in small numbers in autumn on the 

 south shore of Long Island and on the coast of New Jersey. He cites 

 specimen records to support his statement. Richard W. Castenholz 

 (1954) describes an exhausted bird on board the University of Miami 

 Marine Laboratory's research vessel T-19 in the latitude of Ft. 

 Lauderdale, Fla., on Oct. 17, 1952. Recent specimen records from 

 Nantucket, Mass., 1957; Bermuda, 1958; Florida, 1958, 1960, and 

 1963; Rhode Island, 1960; Virginia, 1961; and Maryland, 1961, give 

 further evidence of this sparrow's regular fall occurrence along the 



