Odd Nesting Sites of Samuel's Song Sparrow
Odd Nesting Sites of Samuel's Song Sparrow. On the 29th of April, 1898, I found a nest of this species built in the side of a large bunch of driftwood and leaves, lodged in the forks of a willow tree, twelve feet above the ground, on the banks of a stream. The eggs, three in number, were laid in a depression, which was slightly lined with straw and hair, in the side of the mass of driftwood, and were far advanced in incubation. This nest was discovered by seeing the bird leave. Just a year later, upon the 29th of April, 1899, I secured a set of four fresh eggs from a nest which was built in an old nest of the Black-headed Grosbeak from which a set of eggs was taken in 1898. The nest was in a fork near the top of a small willow tree, ten feet from the ground, in a thick growth of small willows near a stream. It was placed in a Grosbeak's nest, and was compactly built of straw, leaves and grasses, lined with fine grass and horsehair. When we consider that this sparrow usually nests in blackberry thickets and thick underbrush three or four feet above the ground, it will be readily seen that the above recorded nests were in rather unusual places.
