ALTA MIRA LICHTENSTEEN'S ORIOLE 231 



J. S. Rowley tells me that the nests he saw "were sewed to the 

 under side of banana palm fronds." 



The measurements of 40 eggs average 23.0 by 16.0 millimeters; the 

 eggs showing the four extremes measure 26.6 by 15.9, 22.5 by 16.9, 

 22.0 by 16.0, and 22.5 by 15.1 millimeters. The eggs are practically 

 indistinguishable from those of the species elsewhere. 



DISTRIBUTION 



The San Lucas hooded oriole is resident in southern Baja California 

 from San Ignacio, Comondu, and Carmen Island south to Cape 

 San Lucas. 



ICTERUS GULAKIS TAMAULIPENSIS Ridgway 



Alta Mira Lichtenstein's Oriole 

 HABITS 



This brilliantly colored and well-marked oriole was added to our 

 fauna by Thomas D. Burleigh (1939), who collected a female near 

 Brownsville, Tex., where it was probably only a winter wanderer, as 

 its known range is from Veracruz, Pueblo, and San Luis Potosi to 

 Tamaulipas in eastern Mexico. Burleigh says of its capture: "The 

 day it was collected, January 7, 1938, it was found feeding with a 

 flock of Green Jays (Xanthoura luxuosa glaucescens) in rather thick 

 woods a few miles north of Brownsville; it was restless and wary, 

 and was approached only with difficulty.' ' 



Two other races of the species are found in southwestern Mexico 

 and in Yucatan, respectively. In naming it Ridgway (1902) describes 

 it as "similar to 7. g. gularis, but decidedly smaller and the coloration 

 more intense, the orange-yellow more decidedly orange (usually rich 

 cadmium orange) ; black at anterior extremity of malar region, broader; 

 bill shorter and deeper through base." 



Sutton and Pettingill (1943), to whom we are indebted for most of 

 our knowledge of its habits, describe it as — 



A conspicuous, orange, black and white bird of eastern Mexico's coastal plain. 

 * * * It is larger than the other common nesting orioles of this region, the Hooded 

 (Icterus cucullatus) and the Black-headed {Icterus graduacauda), being fully 9 

 inches long. Its song is loud and repetitious. It is especially notable for two 

 reasons: (1) The male and female are so much alike in size as well as color as to be 

 virtually indistinguishable in the field, a resemblance that certainly is not charac- 

 teristic of the Icteridae in general. (2) The nest is customarily placed in such an 

 exposed situation as to suggest that the instinct for hiding it has been lost, or 

 perhaps has been supplanted by an instinct for advertising it. This is hardly 

 true of most orioles of the genus Icterus. 



380928—57 16 



