The Song Sparrows 



Song Sparrows of California are even more notably attached to water. 

 Only in the extreme Northwest, where conditions of humidity are wide- 

 spread, do they surfer themselves to range above half a mile or so from 

 some stream or swamp or saline marsh. A plot of their distribution in 

 summer, therefore, would look like a partial blue print of our hydrographic 

 system. Only a partial one, however, for Melospiza is unaccountably 

 absent from considerable and well-watered areas of our State. Thus, there 

 are no resident Sparrows in the Sacramento Valley; and they are 

 exceedingly scarce in the western foothills of the Sierras. Even in the 

 interior the bird exhibits a strong aquatic tendency. Not only will the 

 bird build its nests in tussocks entirely surrounded by water, but it will 

 itself plash about carelessly in shallow water; and it sometimes seizes and 

 devours small minnows. This hydrophilous tendency has become espec- 

 ially fixed in the saline marshes bordering upon San Francisco Bay. The 

 extreme example is found in the Alameda Song Sparrow (M. m. pusillula), 

 which scarcely deserts the salicornia barrens for a single hour, and which 

 rears its young, as it gleans its 

 living, on the brink of the 

 tide channels. 



Silver-tongue is 

 also a bird of the 

 ground and contig- 

 u o u s levels. 

 When hiding he 

 does not seek the 

 depths of the fol- 



Taken in Pasadena Photo by Donald R. Dickey 



"HIS COAT IS NORMALLY STRIPED LIKE THE WEEDY MAZES" 



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