FIELD SPARROW. 129 



The bird most abundantly met with in this locality is the lively little Field 

 Sparrow or Wood Sparrow, one of the most charming songsters we possess. To become 

 acquainted with this Sparrow we need not go far or search long. While sitting on the 

 piazza covered with yellow honey-suckle {Lonicera Sara) and clematis, we hear its 

 peculiar loud and sweet song from all sides. During the breeding season it never enters 

 the interior of woods, nor does it occur in open fields or bushless prairies. Its favorite 

 haunts are the scattered bushes on the edge of woods, neglected fields, and pastures, where 

 bushes and thickets have grown up luxuriantly, and especially in such places it occurs, 

 where the forest has been cut down and where among isolated trees, old stumps, and 

 rotten logs dense thickets of snowberry, hazel, nine-bark, wild gooseberry bushes, and 

 vine-covered small trees have sprung up. We may also find the bird in the shrubbery 

 of fence comers and even on road-sides. Sometimes the ornamental shrubs of large 

 gardens bounding woodlands are also selected for a summer home. 



During the breeding season this little Finch is distributed from Arkansas and Vir- 

 ginia, north to Wisconsin, southern Canada, and Maine, and from the Atlantic west to 

 the Missouri. In the northern parts of its habitat it is a rare bird, having never been 

 observed by me in Wisconsin or northern Illinois, though other naturalists have found 

 it there occasionally. In central Illinois it occurs more frequently, and in the southern 

 part of that State it is very abundant. Its true home extends from Missouri east to 

 New Jersey etc. It is a common New England bird in field, pasture, and scrub land, but 

 it is decidedly more southerly in its general range. "It is naturally" limited northward 

 by the AUeghanian Fauna, though extending also into the Canadian." - 



At Freistatt, Lawrence Co., Mo., the Field Sparrows make their appearance from 

 March 25 to April 1. By the middle of April even the last stragglers and all the females 

 have arrived. At St. Louis they make their appearance about the same time. Several 

 days after their arrival the large flocks dissolve, and by the beginning of May we only 

 observe the single pairs in their breeding ranges. One pair frequently lives in the im- 

 mediate neighborhood of another. In southern Missouri, where the bird breeds in 

 large numbers on the bushy borders of woods and half-wild localities, I have found 

 during the space of a single hour six nests on an area not more than three acres in 

 extent. In this locality full sets of eggs are found late in May, farther north in the 

 first week of June. 



This Sparrow is much livelier and quicker in its motions than the Chippy; its 

 flight is also more extended and rapid, and the bird is altogether wilder. "Although 

 equally common with the Chipping Sparrow," says Prof. Robert Ridgway, "and in many 

 localities even more abundant, the little Field Sparrow is far less known on account of 

 its more secluded habits. Instead of seeking the society of man it almost wholly avoids 

 the towns, and seems inseparably attached to the rural districts. It is by no means 

 timid or retiring, however, but prefers the country because only there can it find those 

 localities which are essential to its presence." 



Only occasionally I have found the nest on the ground at the foot of a dense bush 

 or herb. Almost all the nests I examined were discovered in very dense bushes which 

 were frequently overgrown with climbing plants. They were always artfully hidden in 



the interior of the bushes, and were situated from one to four feet from the ground. 



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