62 THE NELSON SPARROW. 



No. 39. 



NELSON SPARROW. 



A. O. U. No. 549.1. Ammodramus nelsoni (Allen). 



Description.— Adult : Crown rich dark brown, without distinct median 

 stripe; feathers of back, and especially scapulars, umber brown with conspicuous 

 white, or pale buffy, edgings; breast, sides, and flanks deep buff or ochraceous, 

 the breast marked, if at all, with a few narrow dusky streaks, the sides more 

 heavily and broadly marked in chains ; the buffy sides of the head include slaty 

 auriculars and a dark brown post-ocular stripe, which turns up at the posterior 

 extremity; throat and belly clear white. "Length 5.50 (139.7) ; wing 2.25 (57.2) ; 

 tail 1.90 (48.3); bill .43 (10.3)" (Dwight). 



Recognition Marks. — Warbler size; heavy buffy coloration on breast and 

 sides, obscurely streaked; shy, secretive habits. 



Nesting not well known ; described as similar to that of the Leconte Sparrow. 

 Nest, of grasses, carefully concealed in tussock or on ground. Bggs, 4 or 5, 

 greenish-, or grayish-white, thickly speckled or spotted, chiefly about larger end, 

 with browns and blacks. 



General Range. — Fresh marshes of the interior, from northern Illinois north- 

 ward to North Dakota and Manitoba ; south in winter to Texas ; in migrations 

 visits the Atlantic Coast, New England, and lower Hudson Valley to Charleston, 

 South Carolina. Accidental in California. 



Range in Ohio. — One record, Ashtabula, Jefferson county, by Robert J. Sim, 

 1902. 



IF in moments of insight we are sometimes tempted to bless our obscurity, 

 we have good example for it in this shy little Sparrow. The probabilities are 

 that the bird trespasses upon our borders yearly, yet, so far, only one sharp eye 

 has caught him poaching. Certain it is that he is abundant in the interior, 

 and certain it is that he is not uncommon on the Atlantic coast in winter. Ergo 

 — he must pass over Ohio, at least occasionally ; and what more natural than 

 that he should pause for breakfast somewhere in the hospitable swamps which 

 line the southern shores of Lake Erie? It gives ornithologists a properly 

 chastened sense to realize that here is one bird at least which is still too clever 

 for him. But on second thought we pocket our chagrin good naturedly; for 

 here is one bird, too, whose humble, stealthy ways deliver him from the seat 

 of scorn upon mi-lady's bonnet and whose eggs are not found in every small 

 boy's sawdust box. 



The Nelson Sparrow was first described from the Calumet marshes near 

 Chicago in 1877. Since then it has been found numerously in the prairie 

 marshes of the West, but as yet comparatively little is known of its life history. 

 Col. Goss (Birds of Kansas, 1891, 449) speaks of the song as "a short, weak, 

 unmusical twittering warble." Certain parties^ are said to have found it 



1 Mr. Walter Raine and Mr. G. F. Dippie. See Davie, "Nests and Eggs of N. A. Birds," p. 374. 



