2 BULLETIN 19 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



(1936), writing of the Baikal Mountains, has described the species 

 as mainly characteristic of the subalpine scrub zone and mentions 

 meeting with it in two places in scrub of Pinus pumila. He states 

 that the birds were shy and secretive. 



Nesting. — Popham (1897), who found six nests in the forests of the 

 Yenisei Valley at Yeniseisk, states that these were "sometimes placed 

 as high as eight feet from the gi'ound in the fork of a willow, and at 

 others quite low down in the stump of a dead tree, and composed of 

 small twigs and dry grass lined with moss and a few hairs." Farther 

 north on the Yenisei, Seebohm (1879) found the species mainly fre- 

 quenting the willow scrub near the banks of the river and took a nest 

 in latitude 70i^°, which was built within a foot of the ground. 



Eggs. — The eggs are a uniform, rather deep blue and are doubtfully 

 distinguishable from those of the European hedge-sparrow {Prunella 

 TTwdularis) , though they are said to tend to be rather paler and smaller. 

 The clutch is 4-G. Jourdain (in Hartert, 1910) gives the measure- 

 ments of 31 eggs as : average, 18.55 by 13.75 ; maximum, 20.6 by 14.2 

 and 19.1 by 14.4 ; minimum, 17 by 13.2 and 17.2 by 12.6 millimeters. 



Young. — No details are recorded. 



Plumages. — The plumages are described in Hartert's great work, 

 "Die Vogel der palaarktischen Fauna" (1910). The juvenal plumage 

 is like the adult's, but with colors paler and with flecks of brown on 

 the throat and breast. 



Food. — The food consists of insects and other small invertebrates, 

 together with small seeds in summer and almost exclusively in winter. 

 Exact data seem to be almost entirely lacking, but seeds of Amaranthus 

 are recorded. 



Behavior. — A quiet unobtrusive bird described as very much like 

 its better-known relative the European hedge-sparrow in habits. Like 

 that species it is inclined to skulk in low cover, though, at any rate 

 in the breeding season, it will also perch in and sing from tall trees, 

 when these are present. Seebolmi seldom saw it on the wing, but in 

 autumn Miss Haviland (1915) found that birds which were met with 

 flitting about the bushes of the Yenisei Delta frequently took wing 

 and flew a short distance with a jerky, pipitlike flight. 



Voice. — ^The note is a shrill triple call rendered by Seebohm (1901) 

 as til-il-il and described by him as titlike. It has a short unpretentious 

 but not unpleasing song, which both Seebohm and Popham (1897) 

 describe as resembling that of the European hedge-sparrow, which 

 is a short, high-pitched warbling strain. It may be delivered either 

 from low cover or, within the limits of forest growth, from well up 

 in a tree, and is at any rate of sufficient merit for the species to be 

 kept as a cage bird by the Chinese. 



Field marks. — No field characters have been recorded as such, but 

 it is a small bird of somewhat warblerlike, though fairly robust, build 



