54 THE RELATION OF SPARROWS TO AGRICULTURE. 



out in the open plains without regard to the presence of trees or 

 shrubs. In this way they accomplish work that would otherwise be 

 left undone; for most of the other members of the sparrow family 

 that subsist entirely, or nearly so, on weed seed in the winter mil not 

 be found far from convenient shelter to which they can repair in case 

 of danger. 



LAPLAND LONGSPTTR. 



{Calcarius lapponicus.) 



The Lapland longspur is another sparrow of the Arctic zone. It is 

 called longspur on account of the great development of its hind claw, 

 a feature characteristic of the snowflake, also, but to a slightly lesser 

 degree. It ranges a little farther to the south in Avinter than the snow- 

 flake, and resembles the latter somewhat in its winter plumage of 

 mixed brown, though the white-marked wings and tail of the snow- 

 flake serve to distinguish it from the longspur. 



Mr. William Palmer states that the longspur of St. Paul Island 

 {Calcarius lapponicus aJascensis) builds a grassy nest either on a 

 slope or on the open tundra, in which 5 eggs are usually laid. He 

 collected 6 nestlings in whose stomachs was found, as in the stomachs 

 of the young snowflakes of St. Paul Island, the red and black volcanic 

 lava of which the island is composed. One of the longspur stomachs 

 contained in addition a few fragments of the cuticle of small insects, 

 but the others showed no traces of anything but the lava.^ 



Of the winter habits considerably more is known. The birds come 

 with the snowflakes in the autumn and go away with them in the 

 spring. Like the snowflakes, they are protectively colored, strictly 

 terrestrial, and highly gregarious. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway 

 state, quoting Richardson, that longspurs eat grass seed, juniper 

 berries, and the samaras of pines. ^ In his interesting account of the 

 Lapland longspur in 'Birds of Manitoba,' Mr. Ernest Seton Thomp- 

 son speaks of seeing on the plains flocks of tens of thousands, and 

 refers to their voices as a tornado of whistling. He states that in Maj^ 

 these enormous flocks feed in newly sown grainfields, and that the 

 stomachs of the birds he shot contained oats, wheat, buckwheat, and 

 grass seed.^ Professor Aughey found that longspurs, like the snow- 

 flakes, had fed on eggs of Rocky Mountain locusts/ 



The following details are based on the examination of 113 stomachs, 

 collected from December to May, inclusive, in the States of Wisconsin, 

 Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Texas. The examinations, as 



^Fur Seals and Fnr-Seal Islands, part 3, p. 423, 1899. 



-Hist. North American Birds. Vol. I, pp. 516 and 517, 1874. 



sProc.U. S. Nat. Mus.. Vol. XHI, p. 590, 1890. 



•* First Ann. Report U. S. Entomological Commission. App. II. p. 29, 1878. 



