32 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 pabt i 



coverts are narrowly tipped with pale grajdsh buffy; the loral, orbital, 

 and malar regions are tinged with red. The young male has the 

 median underparts tinged more or less with rosy red, while there is 

 no trace of red on these parts in the young female. 



Food. — Once in late February I saw a male nibbling at the fresh 

 catkins of a low cottonwood tree. The small but attractive bright red 

 fruits of the Christmas cactus (Opuntia leptocanlis) also may be eaten. 

 Although pyrrhuloxias sometimes perch in the spiniest of our taller, 

 arborescent choUas, I have never seen them touch the fruit. 



In the autumn, along the narrow roads of the San Xavier Indian 

 Reservation south of Tucson, groups of birds gather in the vicinity of 

 abundant food supplies. Here the fences are overgrown with mes- 

 quite, elder, hackberry, and graythom. Near the end of October 

 when the hackberries were nearly gone, I found pyrrhuloxias eating 

 green berries in the elder bushes, crowding out a few Gambel white- 

 crowned sparrows that had been attracted there first. Some of the 

 nearby fields had been left fallow and were densely covered with 

 pigweed and Johnson grass. Other fields had good stands of ripe 

 hegari of two varieties. On all sides the ground and vegetation fairly 

 moved with hordes of grasshoppers. They were everywhere, even in 

 the upper branches of the mesquites, yet nowhere could I find a 

 pyrrhuloxia actually eating a grasshopper, although I counted 42 

 birds on a 2-mile road, at least 20 in a strip about 200 yards long 

 adjacent to a hegari field. 



At a fence corner, where the hegari came right up to the mesquites, 

 I found three females perching carefully on top of the 4- to 6-inch-long 

 seed spikes. Each bird leaned over, pulled loose a large round seed, 

 straightened up and ate it. As I watched, other pyrrhuloxias came at 

 intervals to feed. They always clung to the top, ate off the top, and 

 gradually worked downward by leaning forward till their bills were 

 lower than their feet. The seeds in this area of about 10 feet square 

 had been eaten almost entirely, while the hegari farther away from the 

 mesquites appeared untouched. Here and there close to the fence 

 hedge I saw many partially consumed spikes. One got the feeling 

 that had the Indians planted their hegari farther from the mesquites, 

 the pyrrhuloxias might not have ventiured into the open so frequently. 

 Perhaps all the blame should not be placed on the pyrrhuloxias, for 

 they had as companions niunbers of Abert's towhees, brown towhees, 

 Gambel white-crowned sparrows, house finches, and even a few house 

 sparrows, any of which may have helped consume the Papago Indians' 

 hegari crop. 



Near cotton fields the pyrrhuloxia must certainly be beneficial. 

 Mrs. Bailey (1928) says: "In August and September (in which 

 months all the stomachs examined were collected) the animal food 



