L7o Moon s - a Songs [,\Vru 



wont, as long as we kept to wooded districts, we were bound to 

 find tins robust sparrow and there he would be the loudest, most 

 constant and most conspicuous songster. Ubiquitous as he was. 

 it was not an easy matter to secure complete records of his songs. 

 The difficulty was not with his pitch, which is very true, nor with 

 his tones, which are free of "burred notes," but with the contrast 

 of intensity in the songs themselves. These consist of such a 

 variety of extremely loud and soft sounds that one must get within 

 ten feet of the bird to hear every one distinctly, a difficult prob- 

 lem with any songster, especially one rather shy of intrusion near 

 his song-site. Despite this I secured a number of records, most of 

 which v\'os. •} to L2 inclusive) are exact representations ami the 

 lacking only insignificant notes. I have also a large number 

 of Fragments such as No. 1. which are of almost equal value in 

 determining universal characteristics. Besides these I heard a 

 great number of songs, which so closely resembled records 2, S 

 and 9 that it seemed useless to note them. These three 



the most distinctive and are typical of the great majority of 

 Magdalen songs. To this class belonged some of the mo-: beautiful 

 and longest ones 1 heard, in fact the re< esent the 



length of the best Fox Sparrow s gs Some of them were quite 

 intricate and were purposely avoided until the shorter ones had been 

 mastered. At this point the expedition to Turd Rock intervened 

 and our return on July I found the 3 g-S< ison on the wane and 

 the songs curtailed to their central themes. Records 6, 7 and 11 

 instances of this and all, ex • 5, were obtained during 



this waning period. Nevertheless they are adequate for the pur- 

 pose of this article, which is to give by the help of their illustral 

 value some idea of general characteristics, rather than exact musical 

 representations of the best this finch can do. 



The song-sites of the Fox Sparrow are conditioned by his habitat. 

 W] . er there are low e\ ergreens massed in dense clumps — and 

 this is the condition of a 1. alen woodland — 



there lie will be found. It make- ference whether tl 



clumps abut on inland fields or front t'. on some precipi- 



tous headland, out alone their edges these sturdy finches are 

 bound to be and will be heard at all times of the day. be it sunlit 

 or foggy. Bach individual has his own particular clump and 



