TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE 327 



sound would surely have been disregarded as a bird call had we 

 been in a region where the squirrels occur." 



Field marks. — The solitaire can be distinguished as a long, slim, 

 brownish-gray bird with a long tail, a short bill, and a light eye ring. 

 In flight the white outer tail feathers and the buff areas in the wings 

 show conspicuously. It suggests a mockingbird, but its coloration 

 is much duller. 



Fall. — Henshaw (1875) writes: "They are quite common, in the 

 fall, in Eastern Arizona and Western New Mexico. Having reared 

 their young, these birds appear to forsake the pine woods, which 

 constitute their summer abode, and appear lower down on the hill 

 sides, covered with pifions and cedars. Their food at this season 

 appears to consist almost exclusively of berries, particularly from the 

 pifions and cedars, and the crops of many examined contained little 

 else save a few insects." 



Grinnell and Storer (1924) say: "The Townsend Solitaire as a 

 species does not, in the Yosemite region, make much of a change in 

 its haunts with the passage of the seasons. In summer the majority 

 are to be found in and about the red fir forests of the Canadian Zone. 

 At other times of year the birds forage and live in the western junipers 

 which often grow close by on rocky slopes, or else they drop to the 

 Transition Zone where mistletoe berries on the golden oaks afford 

 bounteous forage. There are no solitaires in Yosemite Valley during 

 the summer months, but with the coming of winter the oaks on the 

 talus slopes become tenanted by numbers of the birds." 



Frank M. Drew (1881) says that, in Colorado, "in fall the Soli- 

 taire comes out of the woods and can be found around houses, or in 

 low bushes near water." 



Winter.' — Townsend's solitaire does not seem to be much affected 

 by low temperature, its haunts and its movements in winter being 

 dependent on the food supply in the shape of fruit and berries, in 

 search of which it wanders about in large or small groups or in family 

 parties. It spends the winter throughout most of its summer range, 

 except in the most northern part of it, but at lower levels than it 

 occupies in summer. It has been known to winter as far north as 

 Montana, during the severest seasons, even when the thermometer 

 is flirting with zero and winter storms are howling. 



In the vicinity of his ranch, in the lowlands of Montana, E. S. 

 Cameron (1908) records the solitaire as a winter resident, and evi- 

 dently not present in summer. He says that it arrives the "second 

 week in September and leaves middle of April. * * * A pair 

 frequented my ranch in Dawson County during November 1904, 

 and throughout October and November in 1905. On November 25, 



