622 U.S. NATIONAL ]VIUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 tart 2 



PIPILO FUSCUS MESOLEUCUS Baird 



Canyon Brown Towhee 



PLATES 35 AND 36 



Contributed by Joe T. Marshall, Jr., and R. Roy Johnson 



Habits 



It is curious that the arguments over the relationships of similar 

 kinds of birds (like the two kinds of flickers, meadowlarks, and wood 

 pewees) have never touched the canyon towhee as a subspecies of the 

 brown towhee of California. The two have always been considered 

 conspecific, yet they are isolated from each other by the Gulf of 

 California and the Colorado Desert, and they differ from each other 

 in voice, habits, and coloration. The shy canyon towhee calls 

 sheddap and has a pleasant jingling song, whereas the bold brown 

 towhee of CaUfornia calls a sharp chip which also serves, in series, 

 as the rare song. Whereas the brown towhee of California is long- 

 tailed and a fairly uniform brown, the canyon towhee of Arizona has 

 a shorter tail, a white belly, a black spot in the middle of the chest, 

 and a reddish-brown crown patch. This line of reasoning unites the 

 two: there is a gradual transition southward from the California 

 brown towhee to a population at the cape of Baja California which 

 resembles the canyon towhee in every detail except the chest spot, 

 which is lacking. 



Within their large geographic range canyon towhees live in a variety 

 of habitats. All provide open spaces for feeding on bare ground and 

 dense bushes or trees with low growing limbs for hiding. Examples 

 are desert gullies and foothill canyons in Arizona, where the vegetation 

 is giant cactus and paloverde; around sheds, wood-pUes, outbuildings, 

 and chicken-coops of the farm; and in the log fences around com fields 

 and in scrap lumber piles at sawmills in the forested mountains of 

 Mexico. 



Territory. — Each pair of canyon towhees lives by itseK in an area 

 whose size is such that the pairs are generally spaced about 300 yards 

 apart. Unmated males, singing in spring, cover distances three 

 times that in terrain not held by neighbors. But the lone immature 

 bird in winter also remains in a small area. Nests of adjacent pairs 

 have been found no closer together than 175 yards, and successive 

 nests of the same pair have been as far apart as 120 yards. This 

 spacing of canyon towhees implies that each pair or each solitary 

 bird possesses and holds a territory — its place for successful living 

 and nesting. 



Most territorial birds advertise their areas by song and fight for 

 them against encroachment by neighbors. Yet canyon towhees 



