HOST RELATIONS OF PARASITIC COWBIRDS 145 



the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History there is a parasitized 

 set of eggs of the purple finch, taken at Smith's Camp, Bishop, 

 California, May 7, 1922. 



House Finch 



Carpodacus mexicanus (MuUer) 



The house finch appears to be imposed upon only occasionally by 

 the brown-headed cowbird. Ten instances have come to my notice: 

 one record from New Mexico, where Jensen (1925, p. 461) found this 

 finch was parasitized in northern Santa Fe County; three records from 

 southern California — Buena Park (Robertson, 1931a, p. 138; 1931b, 

 205), the San Bernardino Valley (Hanna, 1933, p. 205) Bloomington, 

 San Bernardino County (a set in the San Bernardino Count}^ Museum) ; 

 two from Arizona, where Hensley (1954, p. 204) noted a house finch 

 deserting its parasitized nest and where he later (1959, p. 91) reported 

 a parasitized nest in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; 

 one record from Texas, where Nye (in litt.) informed me that he had 

 found the nest of a house finch with 3 eggs of the host and 1 of the 

 dwarf cowbird at Kerrville, Kerr County, on May 14, 1938; a recent 

 record from Oregon, where Alderson (1960, p. 22) recorded two 

 parasitized nests at North Portland, on May 22, 1960; and one from 

 Cahfornia, where Mr. E. Z. Rett, informed me that, in the files of the 

 Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, there is a card for a set 

 of 5 eggs of the house finch and 1 of the cowbird, collected at Smith's 

 Camp, Bishop, California, in May, 1922, but the eggs themselves 

 could not be found at the time of his writing. 



The parasite in the last instance and in the Oregon cases was of the 

 race artemisiae; in the New Mexico record it was of the eastern race 

 ater; in the Arizona and southern California records, the dwarf race 

 obscurus. In all the records the race of the house finch was Cm. 

 frontalis. 



White-coUared Seedeater 

 Sporophila torqueola (Bonaparte) 



This bird is a little known victim of the brown-headed cowbu-d. 

 It was established previously as a molothrine host only on the basis 

 of its inclusion in the Hst of hosts in Bendu-e's pioneer study (1895). 

 The following definite records may now be added to this otherwise 

 unsupported statement. In the Cruttenden collection, Quincy, 

 Illinois, there is a set of eggs of this seedeater with a single egg of the 

 dwarf race of the bro\vn-headed cowbird, collected "in Mexico" on 

 June 5, 1947. Meitzen (in litt.) found a parasitized nest near Browns- 

 ville, Texas. Fred F. Nye, Jr., also wrote me that in Cameron County, 

 Texas, and in the adjacent portions of Tamaulipas he found several 

 dozen nests of this seedeater, of which three were parasitized. Two 

 of these each held 2 eggs of the host and 1 of the parasite. 



