150 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 233 



Green-tailed Towhee 



Chlorura chlorura (Audubon) 



The green-tailed towhee has been reported a few times as a host of 

 the brown-headed cowbird in Colorado, New Mexico, and California. 

 Henshaw (1875, p. 308) recorded finding a cowbird egg in a nest of 

 this bird at Fort Garland, southern Colorado, (originally reported 

 by Yarrow, 1874, p. 82); Rockwell (1908, p. 173) listed this towhee 

 as one of the favorite hosts of the parasite in Mesa County, Colorado. 

 In the collections of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology 

 there is a parasitized set of eggs from Beaver Creek, Colorado, taken 

 on June 6, 1897, and another from Santa Fe, New Mexico, collected 

 on June 12, 1923. Mitchell (1898, p. 309) considered this towhee 

 one of the most frequently imposed upon victims in San Miguel 

 County, New Mexico. Mr. N. K. Carpenter informed me many 

 years ago that he had found a parasitized nest in Mono County, 

 California. The Colorado and New Mexico observations refer to 

 the eastern race of the cowbird, Al.a. ater; the California one, to the 

 race Al.a. artemisiae. 



Rufous-sided Towhee 

 Pipilo erythrophthalmus (Linnaeus) 



The rufous-sided towhee is a very frequent victim of the brown- 

 headed cowbird. Nearly 300 records have been noted, distributed 

 as follows- Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, 

 and Saskatchewan in Canada; Arkansas, California, Colorado, 

 Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, 

 Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, 

 Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, 

 North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, 

 Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming in the United 

 States. These records involve eight races of the towhee — erythroph- 

 thalmus, canaster, ardicus, montanus, curtatus, oregonus, Jalcifer, and 

 megalonyx — and aU three races of the cowbird: ater, artemisiae, and 

 ohscurus. 



Not only is this towhee victimized over a vast, transcontinental 

 area, but also, in many parts of its range, it is one of the chief main- 

 stays of the cowbird. It has been called one of the commonest hosts 

 in New York by Eaton (1919), in Connecticut by Sage and Bishop 

 (1913), in Ohio by Jones (1903), in Indiana by Evermann (1889), 

 in Iowa by Anderson (1907), etc. In Ohio, Hicks (1934) found 103, 

 nests in the course of many years of local observation, and 22 of these, 

 or more than 20 percent, had been parasitized by the cowbird. 



In California, on the contrary, Baumann (1959, pp. 191-193) 

 knew of only two instances of parasitism (Harmon, 1928, p. 161; 

 Rowley, 1930, p. 131). He noted that the presence of an adult 



