Comparative Breeding Behavior of Ammospiza caudacuta and A. maritima

Comparative Breeding Behavior of Ammospiza caudacuta and A. maritima

Taxonomically the Genus Ammospiza has received the attention of ornithologists for more than a century. Nevertheless, the behavior of no species of the genus has been studied extensively. The papers of Montagna and Tomkins are the only works that mention behavior and natural history in any detail. There has been an increasing awareness of the importance of ethological data and of their usefulness in systematics. For these reasons, I made a comparative study of the breeding behavior of the Sharp-tailed Sparrow (Ammospiza caudacuta) and the Seaside Sparrow (Ammospiza maritima) in New Jersey in the spring and summer of 1955. The Seaside Sparrow is restricted to the Gulf- and Atlantic-coasts of North America, breeding north to Massachusetts. The Sharp-tailed Sparrow breeds south to North Carolina. The overlap of the breeding ranges of the two species is therefore small. Furthermore the forms breeding in the coastal states are restricted to tidal marshes, and the geographically peripheral colonies of each species are small. Irregular nesting is the case for the northernmost colonies of the Seaside Sparrow, on Cape Cod (Griscom, 1944:317), and the same is probably true for the colonies of the Sharp-tailed Sparrow on Pea Island, North Carolina, as indicated by Montagna's failure to locate any breeding birds in July, 1941 (Montagna, 1942b: 256). The center of overlap of the ranges of the two species is in New Jersey where both forms are abundant and can best be studied comparatively. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 36285
Author: Woolfenden, Glen Everett
Release Date: May 30, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English