Jan., 1909. Birds of Illinois and Wisconsin — Cory. 587 



in winter; breeds from Iowa northward through Minnesota and the 

 Dakotas to Manitoba. 



Adult : Top of head, blackish, with a grayish buff streak in the cen- 

 tre; a tawny buff stripe over the eye; feathers of the back, brownish 

 black, edged with pale rufous and buff; throat, 

 buffy white; breast and sides, pale buff, streaked 

 with dull black; tail feathers, narrow and point- 

 ed, the shafts, dark. 



Length, 5 or less; wing, 2.10; tail, 2; bill, .33., 

 Leconte's Sparrow is a more or less com- 

 mon migrant in Illinois and Wisconsin and 

 v' some years abundant in some localities. Ridg- 



Leconte's Sparrow . . ., . ^ , ., , . , . 



way considers it an abundant migrant m some 

 localities and states that in the latter part of October, 1882, he " found 

 it numerous in meadows on Sugar Creek prairie, Richland Co., in 

 company with C. henslowi." 



Nelson considered it a rare migrant in northeastern Illinois. Mr. 

 Frank M. Woodruff gives it as a rare migrant in the vicinity of Chi- 

 cago. Specimens were taken by Mr. Nelson near the Calumet River. 

 It has been observed on several occasions near Worth, 111., and Mr. 

 H. S. Swarth procured a specimen there on October 12, 1905. 



In a note regarding its occurrence near Warsaw, 111., Mr. Chas. 

 K. Worthen states: " I have taken in the last two years on the prai- 

 ries here some twenty specimens; have taken them both in fall and 

 spring as well as during the summer, and am satisfied they breed 

 here, though I have not been able to find their nests or eggs. I have 

 found them on low swampy prairies in the Mississippi bottoms and 

 on dry prairies on the bluffs, but generally in swampy or marshy 

 ground." (Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, Vol. V, 1880, p. 32.) 



According to Kumlien and HoUister it is abundant at times in 

 Wisconsin. They state: " This species was taken at Lake Koshko- 

 nong but three or four times, but always in the autumn, from 1842 

 to 1890. One specimen was taken near Milwaukee in the fall of 1879. 

 In September, 1894, numbers were procured at Lake Koshkonong and 

 at the same date in 1895 five hundred could have been taken. In 

 1896 but few were seen, and in 1897 none were procured. Since 1897 

 but a few each fall could be found. One was taken at Delavan in 

 September, 1900, and others noted. We are at a loss to account for 

 its great numbers in 1895, when a series of sixty skins were secured 

 in two days, and as many more could easily have been taken. It is 

 also rather remarkable that the closest search has failed to produce 

 a single specimen in spring, none having been noted before August." 

 (Birds of Wisconsin, 1903, p. 96.) 



