Harris—Birds of the Kansas City Region. 297 
CHONDESTES GRAMMACUS GRAMMACUS (Say). Lark Sparrow. 
Fairly common summer resident. 
The Lark Finch may be expected from the 19th to 28th of 
April (April 10, 1892, earliest), remaining until late Septem- 
ber. It is generally distributed over the entire county near the 
ledges, or barrens above the streams, where the soil is thin and 
there are small scattered trees. It may be looked for on the 
farming country adjacent to the bluff regions and in the upper 
Blue Valley. It is rather rare in Swope Park, though one pair 
nested on the rifle range in June, 1917. 
The Lark Sparrow is a ground nester and lays its eggs late 
in May. It is a beautiful songster and a conspicuously marked 
bird and may not be easily overlooked. 
ZONOTRICHIA QUERULA (Nuttall). Harris’s Sparrow. 
ry common migrant; fairly common winter resident. 
So far as the writer is aware, the district embraced in this 
list has given to science but two birds; namely, the Harris’s 
Sparrow and the Bell’s Vireo. Harris’s Sparrow may properly 
be called Jackson County’s own bird, since it was discovered 
here, very possibly within the present corporate limits of Kan- 
sas City itself. In late April, 1834, Thomas Nuttall, who with 
Oownsend was making a transcontinental journey in the 
interest of science, discovered, ‘‘a few miles west of Independ- 
ence,’’ on the road to Westport, a new bird which he named the 
Mourning Finch. Not until 1840, when Volume 1 of the second 
edition of his ‘‘Manual of the Birds of the United States and 
Canada’’ was published, did he describe the finch and give it 
its systematic name. The fact of a later vernacular name be- 
coming current is traceable to an oversight of Audubon, who, 
hot knowing of Nuttall’s discovery, thought he had found a new 
bird near Leavenworth on his memorable trip up the Missouri 
River in 1843. He named the bird in honor of his much es- 
teemed friend and companion on the trip, Edward Harris, which 
name has been recognized by the American Ornithologists’ Union 
and thus made permanent. 
The Harris’s Sparrow makes its first appearance here late in 
the first week of October and is present in varying abundance 
until late in November, after which only the wintering birds 
are to be found. If the winter be exceptionally severe, as in 
