398 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



on either. Bendire's is a little smaller than Palmer's, is a little more 

 definitely spotted on the breast, and has a shorter and less curved bill. 

 The songs of the two are somewhat different ; and the flight of Ben- 

 dire's is smoother, less jerky, than that of Palmer's. 



Winter. — This thrasher is a permanent resident in Arizona and 

 apparently remains paired during winter. Mr. Stafford (1912) makes 

 the statement that "after the young are launched, the old pair, while 

 remaining inseparable, lapse into a condition of conjugal camaraderie, 

 and that the male quietly courts his mate anew each spring in anticipa- 

 tion of nesting." 



Mr. Brown (1892) says: "During the winter months they leave the 

 mesas for the more sheltered bottoms where they frequent the brush 

 fences, pomegranate and willow hedge rows bordering the ploughed 

 fields, and then, literally, they are in mud to their eyes." 



TOXOSTOMA CURVIROSTRE CELSUM Moore 



PLATEAU THRASHER 



HABITS 



The distribution of this race of the species is now understood to 

 extend from southeastern Arizona, east of the Santa Rita Mountains, 

 and southern New Mexico, through western Texas and into Mexico 

 through Chihuahua and Durango, east of the Sierra Madres. This 

 is the form that we found breeding abundantly in Cochise County, 

 Ariz., which we supposed at that time to be palmeri. The haunts 

 and the habits of the two were similar as far as we could see. The 

 characters in which these two forms differ are explained under the 

 foregoing subspecies, as noted by H. S. Swarth (1929). In New 

 Mexico, according to Mrs. Bailey (1928), it is a common breeder on 

 the cactus mesas and up to 6,000 and sometimes 7,000 feet on some 

 of the mountains. Josiah H. Clark (1904) found this thrasher breed- 

 ing commonly in the State of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where the eleva- 

 tion is about 8,000 feet and Palmer's thrasher in Sonora at an elevation 

 of 1,200 feet, where chollas, common to both localities, served as the 

 most common nesting sites. 



Nesting. — ^With the exception of one nest, all the nests of this 

 thrasher that we found in Cochise County, Ariz., were in chollas and 

 not different in location and construction from those of Palmer's 

 thrasher found farther west. The one exception was a nest with 

 young found in Rucker Canyon, in the Chiricahua Mountains, on 

 April 25, 1922; it was placed in a large soapweed yucca that stood 

 close to the house at Moore's ranch ; the old bird was unusually tame. 



Mr. Clark (1904), who has examined over 100 nests of the two 

 races of this species in Mexico, writes : 



