70 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



less distinct, reminding one of the efforts of a young bird just learning 

 to sing. I did not hear a single loud, clear note." 



Mr. Rowley says in his notes: "This species has the same pleasing 

 habit of singing at dusk, as do the robins of the United States, and it 

 is a toss-up between this species and the San Lucas western flycatcher 

 as to which bird sings the latest into the evening darkness." 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — The Cape region of Lower California. 



Breeding range. — The San Lucas robin is nonmigratory and is 

 confined to the Cape region of Lower California, chiefly in the moun- 

 tains but found also in the lowlands. The range extends north to 

 Todos Santos and Las Lagunas on the coasts and possibly a little 

 farther in the interior as one record reads "road to Triunfo." 



Egg dates. — Lower California: 15 records, April 6 to August 6; 

 8 records, June 13 to June 29, indicating the height of the season. 



TURDUS MERULA MERULA Linnaeus 



EUROPEAN BLACKBIRD 



Contributed by Bernard William Tucker 



HABITS 



The claim of the European blackbird to a place on the American 

 list rested for some years on a solitary specimen from Sydproven near 

 the southern tip of Greenland, a short distance up the west coast 

 (Helms and Schi0ler, 1917). It was a young male in the first winter 

 plumage, with faint gray-brown edgings to many of the feathers and 

 as yet showing no yellow on the bill. Since the date of this occurrence 

 the species has been met with on the northeast coast. Pedersen (1930) 

 records that he was brought a blackbird by a Greenlander, who had 

 shot it from a flight of snow buntings at Cape Tobin on April 8, 1928, 

 and C. G. and E. G. Bird (1941) record that no less than six were 

 seen by K. Knudsen on Bass Rock on November 22, 1922, following 

 a northeasterly blizzard which lasted six days. He shot two and 

 skinned them, but they were lost by shipwreck. 



There is also extant a specimen of the blackbird taken many years 

 ago in California, but there is reason to believe that this was an intro- 

 duced example. Its somewhat curious history was recorded by Tracy 

 I. Storer in The Condor (1923): 



For a number of years there has reposed in the collection of the Museum of 

 Vertebrate Zoology a dark plumaged thrush which was thought by some people 

 to be merely a melanistic example of the Western Robin. In fact, the writer had 

 so accepted the bird, and had used it on two or three occasions in demonstrating 

 color abnormalities to classes in vertebrate zoology, contrasting it with an almost 



