BREWER'S BLACKBIRD 323 



tioned above. Some of the birds in the business district, as well as 

 some at the river mouth, remain to forage locally. 



Indications are that in this region the Brewer's blackbird goes to 

 roost earlier and leaves the roost correspondingly later than some 

 other species in the area. The redwing has been heard calling up 

 to 10 and 12 minutes after the last Brewer's notes were heard. (The 

 female noted above went to her roosting tuft, silently, 13 minutes 

 before the last redwing note was heard from the adjoining marsh, 

 October 30, 1944, and 14 minutes before the last bush-tit (Psaltriparus 

 minimus) notes were heard on November 17, 1943.) In the morning, 

 also, several species of passerines have been heard before the first 

 calls of the Brewer's were detected. Golden-crowned sparrows 

 (Zonotrichia coronata) have been heard making their first call 21 

 minutes before the first Brewer's blackbird notes. 



Similar diurnal rhythms between pine roosting places at Berkeley, 

 Calif., and distant foraging places have been described by Mulford 

 (1936). Stott (MS.) furnishes the following notes from San Diego, 

 Calif., where he watched a wild flock at the zoo: 



"While their roosting place changes from time to time (bamboo 

 clumps, palm crowns, Grevillea trees, etc.) they follow a fairly stable 

 pattern in their diurnal activities about the pool. Each morning 

 they appear first on a telephone line which stretches across a canyon 

 north of the Mirror Pool area. Suddenly a small group at the south 

 end of the line drops to the ground on a macademized road; there it is 

 shortly joined by another group and another, until the entire flock 

 has forsaken the wire. Its members strut up and down the road in 

 search of scattered popcorn. In the late afternoon the blackbirds 

 begin to congregate near the pool until they form a more or less com- 

 pact flock. Subsequently, they fly in small groups back to the 

 telephone wire on which they had congregated earlier in the day. 

 Their next move is a unified one and takes them to their current 

 roosting place." 



Lockerbie (MS.) mentions the use of cattails for roosting in the 

 Salt Lake City, Utah, region. Bassett (1931) found them using 

 floating duck-hunting blinds, covered with eucalyptus boughs, that 

 were anchored nearly a mile from the high tide line in San Pablo Bay, 

 Calif. 



Voice. — In the belief that there is no really satisfactory way to 

 syllabify the notes of this species, I have merely attempted a tentative 

 and, it is hoped, suggestive rendering of the utterances. In some of 

 the cases the associated activity of the bird is mentioned, together 

 with the function of the call, when this is known, in order to aid the 

 reader in identifying the notes. Most calls are subject to consider- 

 able individual variation but are always identifiable as one of 13 



