BREWSTER: BIRDS OF THE CAPE REGION, LOWER CALIFORNIA. 217 



conspicuously marked as are any of the autumn specimens. Nevertheless, it 

 is apparently a characteristic of immaturity which, perhaps, does not wholly 

 disappear before the second or third year of the bird's life. 



The amount of white on the sides of the head, upon which some stress has 

 been laid by writers as a probable specific character, proves to be highly vari- 

 able. Some birds have a distinct white ring completely encircling the eye, 

 and, in addition, a broad white stripe extending along the side of the head 

 above the eye nearly to the nostril. In others the white is confined to the 

 eyelids, and a short space a little above the eye, the remainder of the sides 

 of the head being perfectly plain and of about the same color as the crown. 

 These extremes are connected by various intermediate styles. Similarly, the 

 throat in some birds is chiefly white with only a few narrow, dark markings, 

 while in others the streaks are so broad and numerous as to be almost fused. 

 The majority of specimens have the tail perfectly plain, or with at most a very 

 narrow light edging on the tips of the outer feathers. In two of my skins, 

 however, the outer two feathers are conspicuously white-tipped, and in one of 

 these birds the white spot extends back ten one-hundredths of an inch on the 

 outermost feathers. 



The bill is perhaps the most variable feature of all, being sometimes long, 

 slender, strongly hooked, and distinctly notched at the tip, sometimes broad 

 and deep, with the tip of the upper mandible barely extending beyond that of 

 the lower. The color of the bill is highly variable. In most of the spring 

 specimens it is wholly pale, pure yellow, with usually, but not invariably, a 

 dusky space at the tip of the upper mandible. One bird (No. 14,469, April 

 30) has the base of the lower, and the middle of the upper, mandible wood 

 brown, the remainder of the bill being dark horn-colored. This is about the 

 average style of coloring with autumn specimens, but some of the latter have 

 the entire upper, and the terminal half of the lower mandible horn-colored, 

 while in a few both mandibles are nearly uniform yellowish brown. Although 

 a dark bill is not always correlated with the presence of ashy clouding beneath, 

 I am inclined to believe that, like the latter, it indicates immaturity, and is 

 usually, if not always, characteristic of young birds, certainly persisting during 

 the first autumn, and, with some individuals, probably through the following 

 spring and summer, also. 



This interesting species, originally described by Professor Baird from a 

 bird killed by Mr. Xantus at Todos Santos in the summer of 1860, was 

 practically rediscovered by 'M.v. Belding in February, 1883, but one specimen 

 besides the type having been taken up to this time. Mr. Belding gives the 

 following account of his experience : " Only about a dozen Cape Robins were 

 seen, and these were all on the Laguna trail. About half were found singly, 

 one as low as 2,500 feet above the sea-level. Mr. Cipriano Fisher, an Ameri- 

 can, who has often hunted deer at Laguna, informed me that Robins were 

 sometimes abundant there. This may be the case when the berries of the 

 California Holly (Heteromeles), which grows abundantly in the neighborhood, 

 are ripe." 



