BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



269 



155. Passerculus sandwichensis savanna (Wils.). 

 Savanna Sparrow. 



Abundant transient visitor in spring and autumn ; formerly a locally common summer 

 resident, also, but now seldom seen during the breeding season. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



March 29, i88g, one seen, Lower Mystic Pond, W. Faxon. 



April 5 — November i . 

 December 4, 1889, one male 1 taken, Somerville, W. VV. Brown. 



NESTING dates. 



May 21 — 25. 



On May 21, 1866, I took a nest of the Savanna Sparrow, containing four 

 eggs,^ in the fields bordering Vassal! Lane, and during that same season another, 

 with three eggs, in the meadows between Hill's Crossing and Belmont. The birds 

 continued to breed rather commonly in both places for fifteen or twenty years 

 after the date just mentioned. Why they finally ceased to do so is difficult to 

 explain, for, at the time of their disappearance, neither locality had undergone 

 any material change. They used to nest regularly throughout the salt marshes 

 along Charles River, and really abundantly in those which formerly extended from 

 Whittemore Point to the old Magazine in Cambridgeport, as well as in the Long- 

 fellow Marshes. In the latter, just behind the Cambridge Hospital, I found sev- 

 eral broods of young, only just able to fly, as recently as July, 1898. Since then 

 almost the entire surface of these marshes has been drained and remodelled 

 by the Park Commissioners, and, as nearly as I can ascertain, the Savanna 

 Sparrows have nearly if not quite ceased to breed there. Nor can I learn 

 of any other locality in the immediate neighborhood of Cambridge which the 

 birds still inhabit regularly in summer. 



Savanna Sparrows continue to occur rather abundantly in the more open 

 and thinly settled portions of the Cambridge Region at their seasons of migration 

 when, as at all other times, they are given to haunting wet or very moist places 

 covered with long grass. We also find them — often in company with Song 



'No. 29,610, collection of William Brewster. 



2 Two of these eggs, with nest, no. 969, in collection of William Brewster. 



