Curious Trait of Thick-Billed Sparrow
Curious Trait of Thick-billed Sparrow
Many years ago I took a nest and four fresh eggs of the thick-billed sparrow (Passerella iliaca megarhyncha) from a bush of Ceanothus cordulatus and secreted it in a sparse growth of "mountain misery" (Chamæbatia foliolosa) forty or fifty feet from where I had found it. In an hour or two I returned for the nest which I found, but the eggs were gone. I happened to see one of them two or three feet from the nest in a line with its former site, and following that line I found them all. One was directly under the place from which I had taken it, one was nearly there, and the other was not more than twenty feet from it. I inferred that the parent birds had rolled them on the ground, which they could easily have done, as the course was free from any great obstacles, and was gradually descending.
