1162 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 paet 2 



attributed wandering to winter storms, with consequent influxes of 

 new birds to a station. Fifteen of his bu'ds wandered over K mile, 

 seven wandered over 2 miles and one to a point 7K miles away. 

 He suggests that the social organization, described as a straight-line 

 pecking order modified by reverse pecks (Sabine, 1949), may be 

 partially responsible for wandering, as over-crowding at a feeding 

 station might induce social intolerance and force away individuals 

 near the bottom of the social hierarchy. 



Helms and Drury (1960), working at South Lincoln, Mass., color- 

 banded 477 tree sparrows, with almost 2,000 handlings to gather 

 data on measurements, weights, and fat deposition. Field observa- 

 tions were made on a fairly stable winter population of about 50 

 birds to determine size, behavior, composition, and changes of 

 winter flocks. They describe foraging groups as loosely integrated 

 groups, usually four to eight birds, traveling and feeding together for 

 most of the winter. The reason these birds do not coincide regularly 

 in the traps, they believe, is because the foraging group remains only 

 10 to 20 minutes in a feeding area, and thus the likelihood of recapture 

 together is slight. During a normal winter day, foraging individuals 

 spend a maximum of 6 to 10 minutes in feeding activities, followed 

 by a 12- to 20-minute period of either perching, preening, bathing or 

 social activity that may carry the group to another foraging area. 



Tree sparrows appear to have a strong homing instinct. Not only 

 do they return year after year to banding stations; experiments in 

 transporting bu'ds varying distances indicate that they return with 

 astonishing rapidity (Heydweiller, 1935). A bird transported 5 miles 

 was back the following morning. An individual taken 10 miles 

 covered the intervening fields in 16 days. Of 14 birds carried from 

 17 to 100 miles, 3 returned the following v»dnter. A fourth was 

 collected the following year from a flock 3 miles from the station. 



Sargent (1959) transferred six color-banded regular winter residents 

 of one of his stations 7K miles to another. Three were retrapped at 

 the original station from 2 to 18 days later. Another traveled an 

 additional 3% miles in the opposite direction from its original area, 

 and was observed twice at this point. On February 9, he similarly 

 transferred 20 birds new to the station following a snowfall. Some 

 remained at the new station for about a month. None returned to 

 the original station, for which, presumably, they had no home 

 attachment. 



Distribution 



Eastern Tree Sparrow (S. a. arborea) 



Range. — Mackenzie, Keewatin, northern Ontario and Labrador 

 south to Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia. 



