514 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



Breeding Notes. — ^The following spring the arrival of Gambel's 

 sparrow, as indicated by its beautiful song, was in the evening of 

 May 2ist, and the species soon became common. The song is a 

 clear sad strain of five syllables, and with rising inflection. In 

 the Kowak delta on the nth June, I obtained a set of six eggs in 

 which incubation had commenced. The nest was sunk into a hum- 

 mock of moss on the ground under some alder bushes on a hillside. 

 A clump of dead grass partly concealed it from view. It consisted 

 of dry grasses, lined with finer grass and black rootlets. The eggs 

 are pale Nile blue, rather evenly covered with irregularly outUned 

 spots of chocolate and vinaceous. They are ovate, and measure 

 .83 X .63, .81 X .62, .86x .63, .85 X .64, .83 X .62, and .76X .60. 

 the latter being a runt egg. (Grinnell.) 



The intermediate sparrow breeds in great numbers in the wooded 

 sections of Anderson district. The nests were nearly always placed 

 on the ground, in the tufts of tussocks of grass, clumps of Labrador 

 tea (Ledum palustre) and amid stunted willows. 'They were com- 

 posed of fine hay and lined with deer hair, occasionally mixed with 

 a few feathers. Several were made entirely of the finer grasses. 

 The usual number of eggs was four, but a lot contained as many as 

 five and six. Upwards of one hundred nests were collected in the 

 region referred to. ' (Mac far lane.) On June 13th, 1893, at Banff, 

 Rocky mountains, I came across a nest and five eggs of this species, 

 it was built at the side of a grassy mound and made of dried grass lined 

 with hair. At Peel river, Arctic America, on June 2nd, 1898, Rev. 

 C. E. Whittaker found a nest and four eggs built in a patch of moss 

 on the ground. (W. Raine.) 



5556. Nuttall Sparrow, 



Zonotrichia leucophrys nuttalli Ridgway. 1899. 



Common about the prairie and open timbered spots. {Lord.) 

 West of the Coast range, especially on the coast; this is the most 

 abundant small bird in the neighbourhood of Victoria. {Fannin.) 

 Rare migrant at ChilUwack. {Brooks.) Taken at Agassiz and Yale 

 in May, 1889; observed five at the mouth of Tami Hy creek, ChilU- 

 wack vaUey; very abundant at Huntingdon, B.C., on September 

 9th, 1901, feeding on thistle seed; common at Douglas, B.C., after 

 April 25, 1906; first seen on April loth, at Victoria, but common by 



