Plate 94 – Grass Finch

To publish Birds of America, John James Audubon relied on a wide circle of family, friends and collaborators, one of whom was Thomas Mayo Brewer (see Plate 4). In a correspondence with Audubon in May of 1836, Brewer described finding the nest of a Grass Finch or Bay-winged Bunting. The bird is commonly known today as the Vesper sparrow. The nest was in a “dry, sandy field” near the campus of Harvard University. Brewer almost stepped on the nest since the bird he identified as the Vesper sparrow was lying on the nest in dead stillness and was camouflaged perfectly with the ground and vegetation. Instead of taking flight, the parent bird resorted to playacting as though wounded, as many nesting parents are known to do, to distract Brewer from the nest. Brewer marked the location of the nest and returned the next day. This time the parent bird did take flight from the nest and alighted in a nearby tree from which the bird called and cried in another attempt to distract Brewer from the nest. When Brewer returned on the third day to check on the nest, the parent bird again took flight from the nest but this time hid in a nearby bush and made not a sound. “On visiting the spot on the fourth day, I was sorry to find the nest empty and deserted. Was this bird guided by instinct or reason?” Audubon noted seeing and hearing the Vesper sparrow on numerous occasions and reported that in the winter it is found “in astonishing numbers about all the old fields in South Carolina, Georgia, the Floridas, and Alabama.” If 100 or so is considered astonishing, that is the most that can be found in these states today.