THE LINCOLN SPARROW. _ tay 
our “persecution.”’ Is it any wonder that the Lincoln Sparrow is so little 
known to fame? 
While rated a regular summer resident of British America and Alaska, 
Lincoln’s Sparrow has also been found breeding in the mountains of eastern 
Oregon, California, Utah, and Colorado. It ought, therefore to occur in 
Washington; but we have only to shrug our shoulders and say with the 
lawyer, non est inventus. Indeed, the only positive record we have of the 
bird’s occurrence at any season is that of a specimen taken by A. Gordon 
Bowles, Jr., in Wright’s Park, Tacoma, May 22, 1906. 
So much penned in good 
faith in April, 1908. In 
June of the same year the 
good fairy of the bird-man 
piloted him to a spot where 
the Lincoln Sparrows were 
so numerously and so thor- 
oly at home, that he began 
to wonder whether he 
might not have been dream- 
ing after all for the past 
quarter of a century. Ten 
or a dozen pairs were 
found occupying the well- 
known swamp at Longmire’s 
Springs. On the 30th of 
June they were much more 
in evidence than the Rusty 
Song Sparrows, which occu- 
pied the same grassy fast- 
messes; and altho the 
females were not done wait- TEER aE R. 
ing on overgrown babies, Longmire’s Ayer pha 
the males were loudly urg- — *?”""** 
ing their second suits. 
The song of the Lincoln 
Sparrow is of a distinctly musical order, being gushing, vivacious, and - 
wren-like in quality, rather than lisping and wooden, like so many of our 
sparrow songs. Indeed, the bird shows a much stronger relationship in 
song to the Purple Finch than to its immediate congeners, the Song 
Sparrows. The principal strain is gurgling, rolling, and spontaneous, and 
the bird has ever the trick of adding two or three inconsequential notes at 
the end of his ditty, quite in approved Purple Finch fashion. “Linkup, 
LINCOLN’S SONG SPARROW. 
ALLAN BROOKS AFTER PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR. 
