358 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



LEUCOSTICTE TEPHROCOTIS TEPHROCOTIS (Swainson) 



Gray -crowned Rosy Finch 



PLATE 19 



Habits 



The gray-crowned rosy finch, the type race of the species and the 

 first of the rosy finches to be discovered, was described and figured 

 by Swainson and Richardson (1831). They obtained only a single 

 specimen, which was "killed on the Saskatchewan, May, 1827," 

 near Carlton House, Saskatchewan. This race breeds in the northern 

 Rocky Mountains, migrating east to Manitoba, south to Utah, Col- 

 orado, and western Nebraska, west to the Cascade Range, and north 

 to Great Slave Lake. Like the other rosy finches this bird finds a 

 congenial summer home among the mountain snowbanks and glaciers 

 well above timberline, often up to 10,000 or 12,000 feet. 



The gray-crowned rosy finch seems to migrate well inland, along 

 the mountain ranges or in their vicinity, largely avoiding the coastal 

 areas. Ralph B. WiUiams writes to me from Juneau, Alaska: "Dur- 

 ing banding operations from March 22 through April 3, 1948, the 

 writer trapped and banded a total of 300 Leucosticte tephrocotis lit- 

 toralis and 6 Leucosticte tephrocotis tephrocotis. * * * The resultant 

 research into the available literature on the occurence of the sub- 

 species tephrocotis in the Alexander Archipelago failed to bring to 

 light any data, but I have been able to discover several records with 

 reference to littoralis." 



Nesting. — Strangely enough, I cannot find in the literature any 

 account of the nesting of the gray-crowned rosy finch in what is 

 now known to be the breeding range of this typical race of the species. 

 There are plenty of references in the literature under the name of 

 the gray-crowned, but these all prove to be referable to the Sierra 

 Nevada rosy finch, which had not been separated from the former 

 at the time that the articles were published. 



Mrs. Florence Merriam Bailey (1918) found these finches with 

 young in Glacier National Park, which is probably near the southern 

 end of its breeding range, but she does not say that a nest was actually 

 found. However, as its summer haunts are similar to those of the 

 other races, it seems fair to assume that its nesting habits are also 

 similar. 



Eggs. — The four eggs in the collection at the Harvard Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology measure 21.5 by 16.7, 21.9 by 16.1, 22.0 by 

 16.3, and 22.1 by 16.1 millimeters. 



Plumages. — In a general way, the plumages of the rosy finches 

 are very much aUke in both sexes, though the females are always 



