What? You say don't already have Golden-crowned Sparrow on your 
Maryland list? Why not? ... there have been over 140 Golden-crowned 
Sparrows in Maryland before this one in Kent County!!!

Starting in September 1962, through April 1963, over 660 sparrows 
were transported from San Jose, CA to Patuxent Wildlife Research 
Center (PWRC) in Laurel, MD and released as part of a migratory 
homing experiment conducted by L. Richard Mewaldt of the Avian 
Biology Laboratory, San Jose State University, in cooperation with 
Chan Robbins of PWRC.

The 660 birds, including 142 Golden-crowned Sparrows as well as two 
subspecies of White-crowned Sparrows (Z. l. gambelli and Z. l. 
pugetnesis), were transported by jet aircraft to Laurel and released. 
A local PWRC trapping program showed that the displaced adults tended 
to disappear quickly from the release area while the birds of less 
than one year old tended to remain in the area until the spring.

Of the 660 birds released at Laurel, 15 were known to have returned 
to their wintering grounds in the San Jose area. Of these 15, six had 
also previously been released in Baton Rouge, LA during the winter of 
1961-1962 and then returned to San Jose.

Mewalt presumed that since these birds returned to San Jose the 
following winter, rather than the same winter, they had found their 
way to their ancestral nesting grounds and then migrated "normally" 
to their wintering grounds.

Pretty neat, huh?

(This was just a quick summary of his paper).


Reference:

Mewaldt, L Richard. 1964. California Sparrows Return from 
Displacement to Maryland. Science 146 (3646):941-942.



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Phil Davis, Secretary
MD/DC Records Committee
2549 Vale Court
Davidsonville, Maryland  21035     USA
301-261-0184
mailto:[log in to unmask]

MD/DCRC Web site:  http://www.MDBirds.org/mddcrc/rcindex.html
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