726 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
beetles, leaf beetles, and such pests as click beetles and weevils seem to be preferred. 
During June and July in Utah in infested regions over half its food is alfalfa weevils. 
Cutworms, army worms, and other smooth caterpillars are also eaten freely. As it 
feeds farther out in the fields than many Sparrows it renders more valuable service 
than many of the other weed and inject destroyers. 
General Habits. —The sweet-voiced Western Vesper Sparrows or 
Bay-winged Buntings, as they are often called, are surprisingly common 
in northern New Mexico, not in as dry country as that which the horned 
larks frequent, but on the high plateau where there are grass, weeds, and 
bushes. As we drove through the weeds and sagebrush one would often 
dart up and, with flashes of white outer tail feathers, zigzag low to hide 
under sheltering cover. 
They were common the middle of July, 1914, along the fences in the 
region of Taos and out on the Hondo mesa, singing in the fields at sunset. 
Flocks were flushed along the road near San Antonio Mountains from 
the rabbit brush ( Bigelovia ) and snake brush (Gutierrezia ). They were 
also found in the open parks on the crest of the San Juan Mountains at 
9,500 and 9,900 feet. At 9,900 feet, on September 9, 1904, a brood was 
found just able to fly freely. 
In the high treeless Mesa Jumanes country, Mr. Gaut found them the 
most numerous of the Sparrows, and on September 27, 1903, “flocks were 
seen very frequently flying about the tall grass' 7 (MS). 
At Lake Burford, in 1918, Doctor Wetmore found the birds common 
through the sagebrush on the flats and knolls surrounding the lake, and 
the males sang constantly around his cabin. On June 6 a female 
flushed from a nest “ran away along the ground through the bushes with 
her wings extended and held stiffly above her back. The nest was 
placed in a small hollow at the foot of a partly dead sage where the 
trunk arched out over it, protecting and partly concealing it, a needed 
shield from the trampling feet of sheep that v T ere grazing here. The 
nest . . . contained two young, apparently five or six days old, partly 
covered with grayish white down” (1920a, p. 405). 
The Vesper Sparrow is a good illustration of what has been proved 
by bird banding—a system adopted by the Government to obtain the 
actual facts of migration. Attracted into cage traps by food, the birds 
are carefully banded with small aluminum bands bearing their number 
and the words “Notify Biol. Surv., Wash., D. C.” At Santa Fe, Mr. 
Jensen has banded over fifteen hundred birds. As he stated, in the 
New Mexico Conservationist, “At present many thousands of birds are 
carrying a little aluminum band around the leg, and as they are cap¬ 
tured again and again, either in the place where they were first banded 
or somewhere else, they help us to get a good record of their travels, 
their age, and many other things which we desire to know. The bands 
do not in any way hurt the birds or impede their movement, and they 
