562 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part i 



Egg dates. — California: 115 records, May 28 to July 29; 60 records, 

 Jime 1 to June 20. 



Colorado: 10 records. May 19 to June 30. 



New Mexico: May 20 to July 10 (number of records not stated). 



Oregon: 17 records. May 25 to July 16. 



PIPILO ERYTHROPHTHALMUS (Linnaeus) 



Rufous-sided Towhee: Eastern U.S. Subspecies* 



PLATES 30 AND 31 



Contributed by Joshua C. Dickinson, Jr. 



Habits 



Mark Catesby (1731) in bis description of tbe "towbee-bird," com- 

 mented "* * * It is a solitary Bird; and one seldom sees tbem but 

 in Pairs. Tbey breed and abide all tbe Year in Carolina in tbe 

 shadiest Woods." Vieillot, in redescribing Catesby's "towbee-bird" 

 as "ie Touit Noir" in 1819, added tbe following to tbe already growing 

 store of information (translated from tbe French) : 



This species is numerous in the center of the United States where it remains 

 through the summer and from where it migrates in Autumn to spend Winter in 

 the South of the States. The Towhees, because of their short wings, cannot fly 

 at much altitude or stay in the air for a long time; so they travel only by fluttering 

 from hedge to hedge, from bush to bush, and they are never seen at the top of 

 tall trees. They hunt on the ground for the difi'erent seeds they feed on, pushing 

 the leaves and weeds that hide those seeds aside with their bill and feet; they 

 seemed to me to be quite fond of small acorns [petUs glands], eating usually only 

 those that are fallen; they live in pairs through summer, gathering in families 

 during September and large flocks toward the end of October, which is the time 

 of their migration voyage which they accompUsh in company with sparrows and 

 blue and red fallow-finches. Those birds like to stay in summer in the thickness 

 of thickets and at the edge of woods. Then we can see the male on the top of a 

 medium height tree where he sings for hours at a time; his song is made of only 

 a single short and often repeated musical phrase, but it seemed to me sonorous 

 and pleasant enough to make me regret that the bird would stop as soon as there 

 were young ones. The female makes her nest on the ground, in the weeds or 

 under a thick bush, gives it a thick and specious shape; she makes it out of leaves, 

 vines, and bark strips outside and lines it inside with fine weed stems. Her 

 laying consists of five eggs of a pale flesh color with freckles more abundant at 

 the larger end. 



Since these early writings, many details of the life history of this 

 ever popular bird have come to light. Presumably, both Catesby 



*The following subspecies are discussed in this section: Pipilo erythrophthalmus 

 erythrophlhalmus (Linnaeus), P. e. rileyi Koelz, P. e. alleni Coues, P. e. canaster 

 Howell. 



