HOST RELATIONS OF PARASITIC COWBIRDS 127 



if they were removed by the cowbirds, one might expect them to 

 show bm or claw holes. 



All in all, some 32 records have been noted, distributed in Ontario, 

 Quebec, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn- 

 sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 

 Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Ai'kansas, and Texas. These 

 records involve three races of the meadowlark: argutula in Arkansas, 

 hoopesi in Cameron County, Texas, and magna in all the other records. 

 The cowbh'd involved in the Texas record is the race obscurus; in all 

 the other records, it is the typical race, ater. 



I know of no instance wherein a meadowlark has hatched and 

 reared a young cowbird. As far as the parasite is concerned, this is 

 not a successful host. 



Western Meadowlark 



Sturnella neglecta Audubon 



This species appears to be very similar to the eastern meadowlark 

 in its relations with the brown-headed cowbird. Occm-ing as it does 

 in areas under less observation, the western meadowlark has been 

 noted as a cowbird host even less often than its eastern counterpart. 

 Twenty-four records have come to my attention from British Colum- 

 bia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Ne- 

 braska, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. All the records 

 involve the typical race of the western meadowlark, neglecta: the 

 Nebraska record, anonymously published without definite locality 

 (1934, p. 69), involves the eastern race of the cowbird, ater, as do 

 the Wisconsin records, while the remainder are of the northwestern 

 race, artemisiae. 



Silloway (1917, p. 45) found a nest with no fewer than 5 eggs of 

 the cowbird and 2 of the host in Judith Basin County, Montana. He 

 wrote that this was the fu'st time he had ever found the parasite's 

 eggs in a nest of this bird but that later he discovered that the cow- 

 bird "frequently imposes upon the meadowlark in the northwest." 

 These imphed records from the northwest have not appeared in print. 

 In the files of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service there is the record of a 

 parasitized nest found in Dickey and the Thousand Springs Valley, 

 Idaho, in June 1912, by L. D. Wyman. Mr. T. E. Randall found 

 another such nest in Alberta, and there is a Saskatchewan record in 

 the Provincial Museum at Regina. Lanyon (1957, p. 43) found 41 

 nests with complete clutches in the course of his work in Wisconsin. 

 Of these, 9, or 22%, contained eggs of the cowbird. 



Yellow-headed Blackbird 



Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus (Bonaparte) 



The 3"ellow-headed blackbird has been reported only occasionally 

 as a victim of the brown-headed cowbird. I have found 11 records, 



