Sept., 1906 | 
III 
Nesting Sites of the Desert Sparrow 
BY FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY 
T HE naturalist working in the arid plains of the southwest finds his days so 
enlivened by the bright cheery song of Ampliispiza b. deserticola that he be- 
comes greatly attached to the companionable little songster and comes to 
associate him only with sun- 
shine and happy good cheer. 
But for all his merry tunes 
poor Amp hispi za has anxieties 
and tragedies all his own. 
One June morning in New 
Mexico as I was going thru a 
grove of small round junipers, 
with.spirits lifted by the bright 
song from the top of one of 
the trees, my steps were ar- 
rested and 1 gazed with dis- 
may upon a beautiful little 
nest rudely torn from its place 
in the juniper, and the ground 
below strewn with feathers 
of the brooding mother bird. 
The horrid tragedy was prob- 
ably no older than the night 
for the wind had not had time 
to blow away the feathers, and 
tracks tho blurred by the 
night’s rain were fresh enough 
to fix the blame upon the 
marauder — a coyote or lynx. 
Was the songster to whom I 
had been listening, from the 
neighboring juniper top still 
hopefully calling for his poor 
dead mate? Or— with the 
philosophy that comes so 
quickly to the short-lived 
little beings whose emotions 
are compressed into hours — 
was he calling for another 
mate to help make a home in 
the desert ? 
A few days afterward we 
got hint of an arrested Am- 
phispiza tragedy. Close to 
camp we discovered a nest in 
a low tree cactus and on ex- nest of desert sparrow 
amination found that one From Biological Survey Collection (by Permission) 
side was torn out and that there was only one nestling left. The brooding 
1 Published by permission of C. Hart Merriam, Chief of Biological Surve 
