The Savanna Sparrows 



detached bit of brown earth done up in dried grasses — a feathered com- 

 monplace which the landscape will swallow up the instant you take eyes 

 off it. To be sure, if you can get it quite alone and very near, you see 

 enough to admire in the twelve-radiating pattern of the head, and you 

 may even perceive a wan tint of yellow in the superciliary region; but 

 let the birdling drop upon the ground and sit motionless amidst the 

 grass, or in a criss-cross litter of weed-stalks, and sooner far will you 

 catch the gleam of the needle in the haystack. 



Savanna Sparrows are birds of the meadows, of the pastures, of 

 weedy waysides, and of open places generally. A fallow field is treasure- 

 trove; and as for the fences, every barleycorn length of every wire or 

 rail-top probably knows the pressure of Savanna's foot. In the warmer 

 lowlands the birds swarm all winter long, and if the Zonotrichice did not 

 already hold unquestioned honors in point of abundance, I would respect- 

 fully enter P. sandwichensis as a contestant. But as for the migrants, all 

 you can ever get out of them is a game of hide-and-seek — or else an 

 apprehensive tss from distant weed-tops, where the birds are taking 

 counsel together as to what line of flight they shall next attempt. 



Save for the littoral forms, P. s. bryanti and P. beldingi, which 

 receive separate consideration, the Savanna Sparrows are not extensively 

 resident in summer in California. They may be found regularly only 

 in the northeastern portion of the State, and in the region east of the 

 Sierras as far south as Owens Lake. Dr. Grinnell, however, has noted 

 an isolated colony in northeastern Kern County, at the junction of the 

 Kern River with its South Fork, and there is no reason why others may 

 not be mapped out in the meadows of the Sierran foothills. 



In their nesting habits these little fellows come nearer to colonizing 

 than do any other resident members of the Sparrow family. Large 

 tracts of land, apparently suitable, will be left untenanted, while in a 

 nearby field of a few acres half a dozen pairs may be found nesting. 

 They are beginning to show an interest in irrigated tracts, especially 

 pastures, but they find alfalfa or grain fields quite too densely covered 

 for their purposes. 



To ascertain the presence of these birds, the ear-test is best, when 

 once the song is mastered. The latter consists of a series of lisping 

 and buzzing notes, fine only in the sense of being small, and quite un- 

 musical, tsut, tsut, tsu wzzzzztsubut. The sound instantly recalls the 

 Western Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum bimaculatus) , 

 who is an own cousin; but the preliminary and closing flourishes are 

 a good deal longer than those of the related species, and the buzzing 

 strain shorter. 



Love-making goes by example as well as by season, so that when 



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