TRICOLORED REDWING 179 



AGELAIUS TRICOLOR (Audubon) 



Tricolored Redwing 

 HABITS 



This handsome blackbird was discovered by Nuttall near Santa 

 Barbara, Calif., in 1836. He sent a male specimen to Audubon, who 

 described it in his Ornithological Biography (1839) and figured it in 

 his other great illustrated works as one of the only three forms of 

 redwings recognized at that time. His specific name has stood on 

 the A. O. U. Check-List ever since as a binomial; it has not been split 

 into subspecies, nor has it been shown to integrate with other forms 

 of Agelaius. Nuttall wrote to Audubon at that time: "Flocks of 

 this vagrant bird, which, in all probability, extends its migrations 

 into Oregon, are very common around Santa Barbara in Upper Cali- 

 fornia, in the month of April." Its range is now known to extend 

 from southern Oregon, west of the Cascade Range, southward through 

 California, west of the Sierra Nevada, to northwestern Lower Cali- 

 fornia. Its center of abundance seems to be in the San Joaquin 

 Valley in California. 



Coues (1874) questioned the status of this bird as a distinct species 

 on the grounds that its bill is similar in shape to that of some of the 

 races of phoeniceus, and "the difference in the shade of red is no greater 

 than that observable in specimens of phoeniceus proper, while the 

 bordering of the red in the latter is sometimes nearly pure white." 



Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway (1874), however, point out certain 

 differences which seem to substantiate the tricolored redwing's claim 

 to specific status : 



Immature males sometimes have the white on the wing tinged with brownish- 

 yellow, as in A. phoeniceus. The red, however, has the usual brownish-orange 

 shade so much darker and duller than the brilliantly scarlet shoulders of the 

 other species, and the black has that soft bluish lustre peculiar to the species. 

 The relationships generally between the two species are very close, but the bill, 

 as stated, is slenderer and more sulcate in tricolor, the tail much more nearly even; 

 the first primary longer, usually nearly equal to or longer than the fourth, instead 

 of the fifth. 



Two strong features of coloration distinguish the female and immature stages 

 of this species from gubernator and phoeniceus. They are, first, the soft bluish 

 gloss of the males, both adult and immature; and secondly, the clear white and 

 broad, not brown and narrow, borders to the middle wing-coverts. 



The lesser wing coverts ("shoulders") of the adult male are colored 

 a much darker red than in any of the subspecies of A. phoeniceus, a 

 dull crimson, or the color of venous blood, very different from the 

 bright vermilion or scarlet of the other species. 



Ralph Hoffmann (1927) says of the haunts of this redwing: "In 



