1176 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 2 



insects — C3 percent gi-asshoppers, 25 percent caterpillars, and 6 percent 

 leaf beetles. 



At Lake Itasca in summer the chipping sparrows often fed by the 

 doorsteps where the table cloths had been shaken, and it was supposed 

 that it would be simple to trap them mth bread crumbs or oatmeal as 

 bait. When neither of these proved effective, we tried fine chick feed 

 with equal lack of success. These chipping sparrows were apparently 

 nearly exclusively insectivorous in the breeding season, for they readily 

 enter grain-baited traps at other times. Burleigh (1958) writes, 

 "Stoddard, in his manuscript on the bird life of Grady County, tells 

 us that, during the late winter and early spring months from 1924 to 

 1930, many Chipping Sparrows were caught and banded that had 

 entered the quail traps operated by the Co-operative Quail Investiga- 

 tion." Stoddard (1931) baited the traps 'Svith a half-and-haK mixture 

 of 'baby chick' feed and 'hen chow,' or in wet weather with a combination 

 of wheat, sorghum, millet, popcorn, and similar whole small grains 

 that do not sour so badly." 



Mrs. Louis de Kiriline LaAvrence writes that she watched a pair, 

 feeding young 9 or 10 days old, pecking at a salt block. Notes sub- 

 mitted by A. D. Du Bois record "The chipping sparrows are frequent 

 and welcome visitors in the vegetable garden. In the nesting season, 

 when they have nestlings to be fed, they patrol the row or two of 

 cabbage plants looking for and picking off the cabbage worms, the 

 troublesome green larvae of the cabbage butterfly. A chipping spar- 

 row that I saw eating dandelion seeds seemed to swallow the downy 

 tufts and all." 



Behavior. — On two occasions I have seen an incubating bird tumble 

 from the nest and flutter along the ground. One nest was in the lowest 

 limb of a white spruce at Itasca Park, 6 feet from the ground and 10 

 feet from the trunk. Each time I approached this nest the occupant 

 dropped out and fluttered hesitatingly along the ground in a direction 

 away from my approach. The second nest was about 6 feet from the 

 ground near the top of an ornamental juniper along the west wall of a 

 building in Delaware, Ohio. This individual behaved in the same 

 manner as the Minnesota bird. 



Cases of "flycatching" have been reported from at least two widely 

 separated points. Laurence B. Potter \vi-ites from Eastend, Sas- 

 katchewan, "This spring I remarked for the first time chipping and 

 clay colored sparrows springing out from a fence in approved fly- 

 catcher style.'' F. H. AUen {in litt.) reports from Massachusetts: 

 "Like so many passerine birds the chipping sparrow occassionally 

 catches insects on the wing. On a September day I saw one associ- 

 ated with cedar waxwings and a phoebe that was flycatching from 



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