Fox Sparrows 
fighting 
sounds made by the Red Squirrel when heard at a distance, 
A bird suddenly attacked by another when feeding and I 
think pecked or “tweaked” a little, uttered a sort of 
chirrup, soft and low. This I do not remember ever he axing 
before. 
Another sound produced by the Fox Sparrows when 
feeding,but less often heard than the snickering, was a low, 
vibrating chir r r r r, rather harsh in quality. 
The Fox Sparrows at the seed beds were “scrapping” 
almost incessantly,especially when collected there in large 
numbers. Their encounters, althoiagh often spirited, were 
invariably brief and seldom or never really vindictive. 
Apparently they expressed only momentary and for the most 
part trivial fits of jealousy or ill-temper. At first I 
thought that they were caused by a selfish determination 
to monopolize spots where food was particulaxly abundant 
but I soon found that even the most quarrelsome birds 
molested only certain individuals of their own kind and 
that it was very unusual (l saw it happen but twice du±ing 
the day) for any of them to attack the much smaller and 
feebler Juncos which were always feeding with them and 
which, had they chosen, they could easily have excluded 
from the feast. My final conclusion was that most of their 
combats were due either to sexual jealousy or to a mixture 
of playfulness and bravado. In other words, they were 
simply bullying one ahother and "showing off", perhaps 
for the benefit of their mates, I noted some evidence. 
