234 THE BIRDS 
Throughout central Virginia there are many ideal 
places as breeding grounds for this seclusive sparrow, 
inhabiting as it does the more open pine woods, where it 
places its nest on the ground, well concealed by low vege- 
tation. The nests themselves are not unsimilar to those 
of the Ovenbird, though lacking the underbody of leaves, 
being made of fine grasses and weed stems, and arched 
over. The eggs, though, which are white, unmarked, 
make the nest easily distinguishable from that species. 
Four eggs seem to be the general number. Size, .77x.62. 
Fresh eges Mav 5th to 15th. Probably only one brood is 
reared with us, and their food differs little from that of 
the Grasshopper, Henslow’s, and Vesper sparrows. 
GENUS MELOSPIZA. 
[581]. Melospiza melodia melodia (Wilson). Song 
Sparrow. 
Rance.—North America east of the Rocky Mountains. 
Breeds in the Canadian, Transition, and Upper Austral 
zones from southern Mackenzie (Great Slave Lake), 
central Keewatin, northern Ontario, central Quebec, and 
Cape Breton Island south to southern Nebraska, central 
Missouri, Kentucky, southern Virginia, and southern 
North Carolina (mountains), and west to the Rocky 
Mountains of Alberta; winters from Nebraska, Illinois, 
Massachusetts (locally), and’ New Jersey south to the Gulf 
Coast, and sporadically north to Michigan and Nova 
Scotia. 
A little bright sun even during our coldest days, finds 
this happy songster in some warm, sheltered spot singing 
