FINCHES, SPARROWS, ETC.: HARRIS SPARROW 751 
the rest rapidly run together, the whole repeated at irregular intervals, 
from fifteen seconds to many minutes (1913, pp. 273-275). 
HARRIS SPARROW: Zonotrichia querula (Nuttall) 
Description. — Male: Length (skins) 6.5-7.3 inches, wing 3.4-3.6, tail 3.1-3.4, 
bill .5. Female: Length (skins) G.7-6.9 inches, wing 3.1-3.3, tail 3-3.2, bill .5. 
Adults: Crown, face, throat , and V-shaped breast patch of streaks or spots, black; under¬ 
parts mainly white, washed 
with buffy brown on sides and 
more or less streaked; cheeks 
gray (buffy brown in winter); 
upperparts brown, back and 
scapulars broadly streaked with 
blackish; wings with two white 
or buffy white bars; bill brown¬ 
ish pink. Young in Juvenal 
plumage: Upperparts blackish, 
feathers, including wing quills, 
edged with buffy and brown; 
tail feathers margined with 
whitish; sides of head and un¬ 
de rparts buffy, malar stripe 
conspicuous; chest and sides streaked with black; upper throat grayish white (Preble). 
Range. —Breeds in Hudsonian Zone from Mackenzie to Hudson Bay; winters 
from northern Kansas south to southern Texas. Recorded from British Columbia, 
Ontario, California, Colorado, Michigan, and Illinois. 
State Records. — On the Rio Grande Bird Reserve, two or three of the Harris 
Sparrow's w r cre seen by George Willett, on December 1, 1916, and, as the birds w'inter 
in southern Arizona and southern Texas, they may well be looked for carefully in 
New' Mexico. 
General Habits. —Like other sparrows, Colonel Goss says, the 
Harris Sparrow frequents “thickets bordering streams and the edges of 
low woodlands,” and are also fond of brush heaps, in all which places 
they can be easily overlooked (1891, p. 453). Their “chuckling note” 
and their plaintive whistle, which Mr. Harry Harris describes as queru¬ 
lous and pitched in a minor key similar to that of the White-throat 
but readily distinguished by the absence of well-marked form, may give 
a clue to their presence on warm winter days and early spring days before 
they start north (1919b, p. 298). 
The migration of the Harris Sparrow is used by Doctor Wetmore, in 
his delightful book on The Migrations of Birds, as “an excellent example 
of a species with limited distribution and migration.” Nesting from 
Hudson Bay westward possibly to near Great Bear Lake, it migrates 
“through a comparatively narrow area along the eastern edge of the 
Great Plains.” Stragglers make their way to Colorado and New 
Mexico on the west and Wisconsin and Illinois on the east. “But the 
full migration centers through a narrow region comprising eastern 
Copyright by H. & E. Pittman 
Fig. 131. Harris Sparrow 
To be carefully looked for in New Mexico in winter 
