July, 1909 
NESTING HABITS OF THE RUFOUS-CROWNED SPARROW 
133 
how this worm was fed and in my effort to get a better view the bird flew out, a 
small part of the w 7 orm still in the bill. The mate had almost immediately followed 
the first bird to the nest and when the first one flew out this other one went at 
once to the nest with his bill filled with a small dark-looking substance. This was 
fed to each nestling, not with the pumping motion of regurgitation, but rather as 
tho emptying the bill and mouth. The more I study newly hatcht birds the more 
convinced I am that the supposition that all, or nearly all, birds feed for the first 
few days by regurgitation, is a fallacy. 
On the morning of the nineteenth when the young were three days old, at 
9:27, I found a bird brooding. The morning was cloudy, with cool wind. The 
brooding bird lookt browner and I thought had more stripes on its back than the 
bird that had brooded the eggs. The dark stripe leadingTfrom eye was also more 
pronounced and led me to wonder if this bird was not the male. One marking 
both birds had which I did not find mentioned in the description of them: On 
ADn.T rufous-crowned sparrow at nest just after feeding young 
each side of the rufous crown-patch, starting from the bill, was a light stripe; from 
the center of the patch-starting, from the bill was a third stripe which, however, 
did not continue over the head and was scarcely more than a spot. As the brood- 
ing bird lookt out from the darkened nest and down on me, she seemed to have a 
striped crown because of this central light spot. 
At 10:15 I heard the note of a Rufous-crowned Sparrow up the hillside. At 
10:23 — fifty-six minutes after my arrival — the brooding bird left the nest, slipping 
thru the grass and making his way to a -weed stalk where he preened himself and 
gave a sharp note, a sort of “sit” that I have heard given by a number of species 
nesting near the ground. 
When the bird had left I set up the camera about two feet from the nest, cov- 
ering it with a large green cloth over which I put sprays of sage. With a fifteen- 
foot tube attachment I could stand, or sit, far enough away so as to be partially 
screened by the bushes. 
In twelve minutes this bird flew up the hillside. Twenty-two minutes later I 
