considerably smaller than those of the males. My observations of two females that were feeding young indicated that each female restricted herself to an area of less than one acre. Female Sharp-tailed Sparrows possibly are territorial, although I recorded no disputes that would substantiate this possibility.

If I am correct in my estimates of size of breeding home range in Sharp-tailed Sparrows (males, three to four acres; females, approximately one acre), certain observations made by Montagna and me are readily explainable.

My netting operations indicated a surplus of male Sharp-tailed Sparrows in a given area. At Chadwick, I netted as many Sharp-tailed Sparrows as I could, without regard to sex. Here I captured 39 males and 16 females (six individuals remained unsexed). On the Lavallette study island, netting was more selective; here I attempted to net the females of the nests I found. The sex ratio at Lavallette was 15 males to eight females (one juvenile was not sexed). Three of the eight females were netted at their nests.

Montagna (1940:196) decided from collecting and observations that male Sharp-tailed Sparrows either outnumbered the females or were polygamous. The results I obtained from netting seemed to indicate a surplus of males. Banding, however, showed that in the breeding season males range over a larger area than do females. With this knowledge, the discrepancy between the number of males and females captured is explainable without an unbalanced sex ratio. If the males range over an area four times as large as that of the females, theoretically, four times as many males should be caught at every placement of the net provided the net remained in place long enough to capture all the birds using the area. In practice, this is essentially what occurred.

Other behaviorisms of this species indicate that it is not territorial. The song of the male is not loud and does not seem to be an advertisement to other birds. In fact, the song of this species is so quiet and lengthy when compared to that of the Seaside Sparrow that I at first thought I was hearing "whisper" or "practice" songs. These qualities of the song seem to indicate that the "advertising" function of song of territorial species is lacking or unimportant in Sharp-tailed Sparrows.

I suspect that male Sharp-tailed Sparrows do not even know where nests are. On July 18 at 7:00 a.m. I was watching a nest from a nearby blind when an unbanded male (I saw the individual sing later) appeared. As the bird foraged through the black grass, it headed directly toward the nest. When the male was almost one foot from the nest the incubating female left. She ran from the tussock and flew a short distance away to a cattail stem. From here she watched the male, which seemingly oblivious continued foraging, coming within inches of the nest. As the male walked away from the nest the female returned. At 8:00 p.m. the same day I was in the blind again. The female was out searching for food when a different, banded male appeared. In his foraging, the male walked up on the grass stems over the nest. The male apparently saw the young (two had hatched on July 17 and one on July 18) for he turned his head and seemed to peer down under the stems. The female appeared (with food) as he was doing this; she flew directly toward him and he flew away. The male was not seen near the nest in later observations.

On July 1 (6:50 a.m.) I was in a blind near another nest as the female approached with food for the young. At this moment a male appeared and the female immediately flew away. The male perched on a tussock within two feet of the nest, sang, and then flew off. The female reappeared in a few seconds without the food. She searched through a clump of black grass four feet from the nest, caught a small, pale green insect, fed it to her one young (there were also two eggs in the nest) and began brooding.

VOICE

Song

Only males of the two species sing. The normal song of the Seaside Sparrow lasts just under two seconds, the buzzing final note constituting three-quarters of the song. Saunders (1951:257-258) describes this song as short, and buzzlike, beginning with two or three short, rather faint notes and ending in a trill at first loud but fading away toward the end. The introductory notes are followed by a higher-pitched, loud, strongly accented, but buzzy note. This note is usually higher than the final trill and connected with it. The song has been written as tup tup ZEE reeeeeeeeee and tup TEE tle reeeeeeeeeee (Saunders, 1951:257), cutcut, zhé-eeeeeeeee (Peterson, 1947:232) and che-zheéeege, che-zhée, che-wéege, chur-zhée and too-szheée (Stone, 1937:910). My field notes contain the following: CHUR-er eeeee, CHUR eeeeee and oka-CHE weeeee. These variations in the phonetic representation of the songs are attributable mostly to the birds. Not only is there variation among individuals, but also individuals vary their songs. Birds that I heard giving a characteristic song suddenly sang a different type for awhile, and then reverted to the original. The bill is elevated and opens considerably with each note; the head bobs with the loud note. Typical singing postures are shown by Tomkins (1941: pl. 3).

The song of the Sharp-tailed Sparrow, as described by Saunders (1951:256-257), is short and insectlike, introduced by one or two short notes; the remainder is a somewhat wheezy trill, growing fainter towards the end. Sometimes there are two trills on different pitches, and occasionally a final short, low note. The quality is as though the sound sh ran through all but the introductory notes. Saunders writes these trills as: tsup tsup shreeeeeeeee and tip tish eeeeee shaaaaaaay. The bill is opened slightly with each note, as I saw when I watched a singing bird with the sun directly behind it. Montagna (1942a:116) noted that A. c. caudacuta sang less often than the more northern A. c. subvirgata.

Both species have specialized flight songs, but in the birds that I studied these songs were infrequent and seemingly unimportant. The flight song of the Seaside Sparrows consisted of a double version of the normal song. Although I heard it only a few times, the flight song of the Sharp-tailed Sparrow seemed slightly louder than the normal song. This song is given by both species as the bird flutters upward ten or 20 feet and glides back down.

Singing begins at daylight and decreases at 9 or 10:00 a.m. when the temperature rises. On cloudy days singing seemed to last longer. Towards dusk singing again increases, but not to the frequency of the morning peak.

The major differences between the songs of the two species are in loudness, length, and frequency. The fact that the Seaside Sparrow sings louder than the Sharp-tailed Sparrow is mentioned by Stone (1937:906). On windless days I heard singing Seaside Sparrows more than 200 yards away; Sharp-tailed Sparrows were inaudible at distances of more than 40 yards. The song of a Seaside Sparrow is rarely longer than two seconds; the song of a Sharp-tailed Sparrow usually lasts for almost 20 seconds and consists of a variable number of phrases like those described by Saunders. A Seaside Sparrow that I watched for one hour sang 395 times or 6.6 times per minute. I doubt that any of the Sharp-tailed Sparrows sang more than 20 times per hour, although I made no comparable count.

Additionally, Seaside Sparrows sing from exposed perches such as tall cattail stems and tall or isolated marsh-elder bushes. Sharp-tailed Sparrows do not often use conspicuous perches for singing. They sing while on the ground or when in flight. They do use exposed perches as observation posts and occasionally sing from them.

Seaside Sparrows often face their nearest neighbor when singing and alternate songs with this bird. The one time Sharp-tailed Sparrows almost always sing is when they