Dr. Coues found this Sparrow very abundant in the southern and western portions of Arizona, though rare at Fort Whipple, where the locality was unsuited to it, as it seemed to prefer open plains, grassy or covered with sagebrush.
Mr. J. H. Clarke, who met with these birds in Tamaulipas, Texas, and New Mexico, speaks of them as abundant and widely distributed. He found them on the lower Rio Grande, but more abundantly in the interior, seeming to prefer the stunted and sparse vegetation of the sand-hills and dry plains to the cottonwood groves and willow thickets of the river valleys, where they were never seen. They would be very inconspicuous did not the male occasionally perch himself on some topmost branch and pour forth a continuous strain of music. In the more barren regions they were the almost exclusive representatives of the feathered tribes.
Dr. Heermann first remarked this Finch near Tucson, in Arizona, where he found it associated with other Sparrows in large flocks. They were flying from bush to bush, alighting on the ground to pick up grass-seeds and insects. They were quite numerous, and he traced them as far into Texas as the Dead Man’s Hole, between El Paso and San Antonio.
Dr. Cooper found a few of these birds on the treeless and waterless mountains that border the Colorado Valley, in pairs or in small companies, hopping along the ground, under the scanty shrubbery. In crossing the Providence Range, in May, Dr. Cooper found their nest, containing white eggs.
Both species of Poospiza, the belli and the bilineata, according to Mr. Ridgway, are entirely peculiar in their manners, habits, and notes. Both, he states, are birds characteristic of the arid artemisia plains of the Great Basin, and, with the Eremophila cornuta, are often the only birds met with on those desert wastes. The two species, he adds, are quite unlike in their habits and manners. They each have about the same extent of habitat, and even often frequent the same locality. While the P. bilineata is partial to dry sandy situations, inhabiting generally the arid mesa extending from the river valleys back to the mountains, the P. belli is almost confined to the more thrifty growth of the artemisia, as found in the damper valley portions. The P. belli is a resident species, and even through the severest winters is found in abundance. The P. bilineata is exclusively a summer bird, one of the latest to come from the South, and much the more shy of the two; its manners also are quite different.
Both birds have one common characteristic, which renders them worthy of especial remark. This is the peculiar delivery and accent, and the strange sad tone of their spring song, which, though unassuming and simple, is indeed strange in the effect it produces. This song, so plaintive and mournful, harmonizes with the dull monotony of the desert landscape.
Mr. Ridgway states that the P. bilineata is not so abundant as the other species, and is more retiring in its habits. It principally frequents the desert tracts and sandy wastes, on which are found only the most stunted forms of sage-brush. Its song, though quite simple, is exceedingly fine, its modulation being somewhat like wut´-wut´-ze-e-e-e-e-e, the first two syllables being uttered in a rich metallic tone, while the final trill is in a lower key, and of the most liquid and tremulous character imaginable. This simple chant is repeated every few seconds, the singer being perched upon a bush. He adds that this bird arrives on the Truckee Reservation about the 13th of May. The nest is built in sage-bushes, and the eggs are found from the 7th to the 21st of June. The nests are usually about one foot from the ground, or thereabouts.
The eggs vary in size from .70 by .55 of an inch to .75 by .60. They are of a rounded-oval shape, and of a pure white with a slight tinge of blue, somewhat resembling the eggs of the Bachman Finch.
Poospiza belli, Sclater.
BELL’S SPARROW.