LAZULI BUNTING 129 



Field marks. — The adult male lazuli bunting is unmistakable with 

 his azure blue head, upper parts, and throat, cinnamon band across 

 his breast, white belly, and white wing bars. His mate is more 

 difficult to recognize. She is dull brown, unstreaked both above 

 and below, with a suggestion of wing bars, and gray-blue in the 

 wings and tail. Her smaller size and bill distinguish her from the 

 similarily colored female blue grosbeak. 



Enemies. — The lazuli bunting is one of the species parasitized by 

 the cowbird. H. Friedmann (1929, 1934) considered it an uncommon 

 victim as indicated by the few records from Colorado, California, 

 and Idaho. The literature contains records of 12 nests parasitized 

 with one or two cowbird eggs. J. R. King (1954) from his observa- 

 tions in Whitman County, Wash., considered the relationship decidedly 

 not uncommon, as two of three nests that he found contained cowbird 

 eggs, and four families of fledghngs included a juvenile cowbird. 

 H. A. Edwards (1919) comments that this is a "species whose home 

 the white-footed mouse frequently preempts. The eggs may usually 

 be found buried in the bottom of the nest." 



A loggerhead shrike, Lanius ludovicianus, entered a banding trap 

 being operated by Warren M. Pulich at Boulder Beach, Lake Mead, 

 Nev., and killed an immature lazuli bunting, the only species that 

 the shrike was able to kill of those in the trap. 



Fall. — The records point to the fact that after nesting this species 

 may move about and congregate in areas of suitable food. It dis- 

 appeared entu'ely from the area in which it had nested in Santa 

 Barbara in the summer of 1952, perhaps because of the drying up of 

 the dense wild mustard tangle in which it had nested. A. B. Fuller 

 and B. P. Bole (1930) saw a "considerable flock of lazuli buntings * * * 

 on July 21, 1927, in a small juniper-studded canyon at the foot of the 

 Wind River Mountains, near Lander [Wyoming]. Others were 

 sunning themselves along fences beside small patches of meadow on 

 the canyon floor." L. L. Hargrave (1932) saw three pairs on July 

 18 in an oat field, and a group of 10 in the same field on the 25th. 

 E. W. Nelson (1875) described them as abundant in flocks along the 

 roadsides near Salt Lake City, Utah, between July 27 and August 8, 

 1872. 



In this post-breeding period it is often recorded at high altitudes 

 and in unusual localities. J. Grinnell and T. I. Storer (1924) report 

 seeing this species at Warren Fork on Levining Creek on September 

 25, at an elevation of 9,000 feet, 2,000 feet higher than any of the 

 nesting records. Similarly F. M. Packard (1945) states that this 

 species is "common along the foothills, but visits this park [Rocky 

 Mountain National Park] irregularly in late summer between June 

 27 and August 30." On Sept. 9, 1935, at Shuschartie on the northern 



