1170 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 2 



or other animals. In one case, a nest adjacent to a pen of bison was 

 lined with bison hau\ Itasca State Park, Minn., is so remote from 

 horses that no nests found in 1954 contained horsehair. In the 

 summer of 1955 a friend generously gave me some black hair from 

 the mane of his horse to take to Minnesota to use as a liu-e to trap 

 the females for banding. It worked very well. At nest Hning time 

 the females readily entered traps containing a few strands of horse- 

 hair. Even after I stopped trapping most newly built nests continued 

 to contain the horsehau', for these sparrows commonly remove the 

 lining from old nests when rebuilding. 



The size of eight nests Walkinshaw (1952) studied varied between 

 80 and 150 miUimeters (average 112 miUimeters) in outside diameter 

 at the top, between 40 and 60 millimeters (average 48.3 millimeters) 

 interior diameter at the top, between 45 and 75 millimeters (aver- 

 age 56.8 millimeters) exterior depth, between 30 and 50 millimeters 

 (average 37.3 miUimeters) interior depth, and between 3 and 5.8 

 grams (average 4.7 grams) weight. 



Chipping sparrows nest in a variety of situations and of trees and 

 shrubs. The favored nesting site seems to be in conifers — pines 

 in the Southeast, junipers where they are common, and spruces in 

 the North. Orchard trees and vines are also high on the Hst of 

 preferences. Of 115 active and inactive nests located in 1954 and 

 1955 in and around Itasca State Park, 85 were in spruce, 11 in jack 

 pine, 6 in fir, 6 in juniper, 4 in white pine, 1 in red pine, 1 in low 

 willow, and 1 in an Ampelopsis vine. Walkinshaw (1944b) lists 

 51 nests found near dweUings at Battle Creek, Mich.; of these 14 

 were in spruce, 8 in arborvitae, 5 in juniper, 8 in grape vines, 7 in 

 the horizontal branches of horse chestnut, pear, or apple trees, 5 

 in rose or spirea bushes, 2 in the side of old straw stacks, 1 on a 

 mowing machine in a semi-open tool shed, and 1 on the ground in 

 dead grass. Burleigh (1958) states that "Pairs frequenting the open 

 pine woods almost invariably build their nests at the outer end of a 

 limb of one of the larger pines, the height varying from ten, to not 

 infrequently, thirty or forty feet from the ground." 



A number of observers in addition to Walkinshaw have reported 

 nests built on the ground. Other unusual nesting sites reported 

 were at the bottom of a hairy woodpecker's winter roost hole 6 

 inches deep (R. F. Miller, 1923), in a hanging basket filled with 

 moss on a stoop within a foot of the door (F.O.H., 1884) and for 3 

 years in a row a chipping sparrow nested in pepper plants hung to 

 dry in later summer not far inside a shed on a Philadelphia County, 

 Pa., farm (R. F. Miller, 1911). 



Most nests are built at low to moderate heights. At Lake Itasca, 

 of 83 nests measured from May 17 to July 23, 1955, 51 (61.5 percent) 



