BROWN-CAPPED ROSY FINCH 379 



throat. Females are duller and paler than males, are less rosy, and 

 sometimes show no pink at all. Their blended colors, lacking in 

 contrast, help identify them. Young bii'ds lack rosy feathers and 

 are nondescript. 



A. W. Anthony (1887) writes: "In comparing the full plumaged 

 australis with L. tephrocotis, both in winter dress, I find the latter 

 much the darker bird, the umber-brown on the breast and back of the 

 female tephrocotis being of about the same shade as that found on the 

 male australis. In tephrocotis the rosy hue is less extended, decidedly 

 duller, and more broken by the ground colors of the body. In 

 tephrocotis 1 often find the rump marked with crescent-shaped rosy 

 spots on a chocolate ground, while in australis , although the rosy 

 patch is seldom, if ever, continuous, it is usually less broken and ex- 

 tends farther forward." 



Food. — The brown-capped rosy finch feeds principally or entirely 

 on insects, seeds, and small plant fruits that occur on or near the 

 ground. So far as has been recorded, it seldom, if ever, feeds in the 

 air. In high altitudes grasses and flowering plants grow only a few 

 inches taU and their growing season is brief. They come rapidly into 

 seed and are quickly replaced by a new succession of plants. Thus 

 a constantly renewed abundance of seeds and fruits is available to the 

 rosy finches. 



E. R. Warren (1916) collected two females that were foraging 

 for their young at 11,500 feet in Elk Basin, Gunnison County, on 

 June 28. Analysis of their stomach contents showed that in one, 

 80 percent was seeds of Alsine (media?) or chickweed, with shelled 

 seeds of Bidens, seeds of Eragrostis, Polygonum, Corizus hyalinus, 

 Corizus indentatus, and Balclutha impicta, one Trypeta, and traces of 

 beetles and spiders. The other contained 50 percent Bidens seeds, 

 35 percent Alsine, 10 percent Eragrostis, and some Corizus, a fly, and 

 traces of beetle. On Specimen Mountain in Rocky Mountain Na- 

 tional Park I once watched a rosy finch fluttering over a growth of 

 arctic willow (Salix sp.) but could not determine whether the bird 

 was feeding on buds or on insects. 



Rosy finches are frequently seen hopping about on the patches of 

 snow that linger on the alpine meadows until late summer, sometimes 

 until new snow falls in autumn. It is often assumed that the birds 

 do so to eat the snow as a source of water, but at least for the brown- 

 capped rosy finch, there is no valid evidence that they do so. Nied- 

 rach, who has carefully watched the activities of these birds on snow- 

 banks, informed me that he has never seen any rosy finches actually 

 eating snow, and that the birds are apparently seeking seeds that 

 have blown there sometime previously. These seeds form strata 

 or lenses in the snow that are readily visible to the eye, and become 



