The Rufous-crowned Sparrow 



THE NELSON Sparrow lives a life of such furtive obscurity, even 

 on its breeding grounds in the Dakotas and on the Canadian plains, that 

 the mention of its name does not excite hope in the Californian breast. 

 Its casual appearance in California, twice recorded, is not supported by 

 additional evidence west of the Rocky Mountains, and we are left to 

 suppose that both cases are really accidental, examples of those stragglers, 

 common to many species, which attempt to go straight south in autumn 

 instead of proceeding in a sharply southeasterly direction, as prescribed 

 by ancient precedent. But we speak with studied restraint. Almost 

 anything may prove to be true regarding the range of a species so obscure. 

 The very existence of the bird was not suspected until 1875, when it 

 was taken on the Calumet marshes, in what is now South Chicago. 

 Almost immediately thereafter it was recorded from Racine, Wisconsin, 

 then from Michigan, then from Kansas, and then it began to bob up on 

 the Atlantic seaboard. The history of the progressive recognition of this 

 ignis fatuus of the marshes, until its normal range was known to include 

 Great Slave Lake and the Gulf States, is one of the lesser romances of 

 ornithology. 



The nesting was first described by Walter Raine 1 from examples 

 studied in Manitoba; but the first United States record was made by 

 Eugene S. Rolfe 2 who, on June 14, 1899, found a nest containing five 

 eggs deeply sunk in wet earth of a tiny grass island in a dismal flooded 

 area near Devil's Lake. Mr. Rolfe's prediction that "its discovery will 

 probably continue rare and the merest accident" has proved all too true. 

 An acquaintance, Mr. Remington Kellogg, recently employed by the 

 Biological Survey for explorations in the Dakotas, informs me, however, 

 that he found several nests of the Nelson Sparrow during the course of a 

 season's work. But having been straitly charged by "the Chief," whose 

 youthful predilections have been quite forsworn, not to "bother with 

 birds' eggs," these rarities were, unfortunately, lost to science. 



No. 46 



Rufous-crowned Sparrow 



A. O. U. No. 580. Aimophila ruficeps ruficeps (Cassin). 



Description. — Adult (sexes alike): Rufous and olive-gray; the olive-gray 

 purest on sides of neck and sides of head (where appearing as broad superciliary and as 

 malar stripe), darkening as it crosses the chest broadly, with accession of tawny element 

 on sides and crissum; clearing, buffy whitish, on throat and belly; above and on wing- 



1 Nidiologist, Vol. I., Feb., 1894, p. 88. 



2 Nidologist, Vol. VI., Oct., 1899, pp. 356-357. 



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