LUCY'S WARBLER 129 



or four hundred feet through the woods although it does not seem 

 loud when heard from nearby. It is perhaps this song that Brandt 

 (1940) describes as resembling the song of the eastern redstart. E. C. 

 Jacot (MS.) reports that the males usually start singing when "a 

 person approaches the territory of a pair, and continues to sing until 

 the intruder has passed." In the Chisos Mountains, Tex., the males 

 were persistent singers. Once several sang even after a dense fog had 

 silenced most other species. They sang usually from bushes and small 

 trees between periods of feeding and moving about but sometimes re- 

 mained for a while on a higher perch (up to 20 feet), singing at fre- 

 quent intervals. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — Chisos Mountains, Tex., and mountains of northeastern 

 Mexico ; probably winters in Colima, Michoacan, and Sinaloa. 



The Colima warbler has been recorded from : Texas (Chisos Moun- 

 tains) ; Coahuila (Sierra Guadalupe and Diamante Pass) ; Tamauli- 

 pas (Miquihuana) ; Michoacan (Patamba and Sierra Ozumatlan) ; 

 Sinaloa (5 miles north of Santa Lucia) ; Colima (Sierra Nevada). 



Egg dates. — Texas : 2 records, May 15 and 20. 



VERMIVORA LUCIAE (Cooper) 



LUCY'S WARBLER 



Plates IS, 19 



HABITS 



Dr. J. G. Cooper discovered this tiny and inconspicuous warbler 

 at Fort Mojave, on the Arizona side of the Colorado River, in the 

 spring of 1861, and named it in honor of Miss Lucy Baird, daughter 

 of Prof. Spencer F. Baird. It might well have been named the 

 mesquite warbler, as its distribution coincides very closely with that 

 of this tree, which seems to furnish its favorite home, most of its nest- 

 ing sites, and much of its foraging area. 



Harry S. Swarth (1905) wrote of conditions then existing : 



South of Tucson, Arizona, along the banks of the Santa Cruz River, lies a 

 region offering the greatest inducements to the ornithologist. Tlie river, running 

 underground for most of its course, rises to the surface at this point, and the 

 bottom lands on either side are covered, miles in extent, with a thick growth 

 of giant mesquite trees, literally giants, for a person accustomed to the scrubby 

 bush that grows everywhere in the desert regions of the southwest, can hardly 

 believe that these fine trees, many of them sixty feet high and over, really belong 

 to the same species. This magnificent grove is included in the Papago Indian 

 Reservation, which is the only reason for the trees surviving as long as they 

 have, since elsewhere every mesquite large enough to be used as firewood has 

 been ruthlessly cut down, to grow up again as a scraggly bush. 



