CALIFORNIA RUFOUS-CROWNED SPARROW 939 



quality with dear, dear, dear, as does Margaret M. Nice (1929) in 

 describing an apparently homologous vocalization in A. r. eremoeca in 

 Oklahoma as "a queer nasal pur-pur-pur" and at another point peer. 

 C. Barlow (1902) spells what is evidently the same note as quirk, quirk. 



Given smgly or in short series, the dew-dew note seems to convey 

 mild alarm or alertness to danger. Hence it is often the first note a 

 person hears when entering a rufous-crowned sparrow's domain. At 

 Oakland on Feb. 19, 1955, a previously silent bird gave this call from 

 the brush when a sparrow hawk jQew low over the hillside. At times 

 this or a similar note is uttered in a longer, stuttering series. R. 

 Simpson (1925) WTites that the most characteristic call of a pair with 

 fledglings at Berkeley "was a very loud, clear r-r-rup, chur, chur chur 

 chur" which "had good carrying quaUties and could be heard for 

 quite a distance." 



To me the full song of this race does not differ noticeably from that 

 of canescens described farther on. C. Barlow (1902) describes the 

 song of one or two males he heard near Milpitas on March 23 as a 

 weak te-a-te-tree-e-e, which differs from the songs heard there later in 

 the season. 



Fall and Winter. — When the singing of the males has dwindled 

 away, by late July in the San Francisco Bay region, and the juveniles 

 have become independent of their parents, the birds' secretiveness 

 again makes them diflBcult to study. They can be found throughout 

 the winter, however, still in their typical breeding habitat, as C. 

 Barlow (1902) first suggested. Some wandering into nearby habitats 

 not used for breeding has been recorded. In Marin County, for 

 example, Joseph Mailliard (1900) notes that in late summer this race 

 "may be observed among poison oak bushes and blackberry vines on 

 grassy hillsides far away from the sage." His assumption that August- 

 September birds in the area were southbound migrants now seems 

 quite unwarranted. 



A slight altitudinal shift may occur, particularly in the interior. 

 Lyman Belding (1890) lists the species as "rare" at 3,000 feet altitude 

 in Calaveras County in December, and reports "one specimen, several 

 seen" Nov. 19, 1884 at Colfax, Placer County (2,400 feet); he also 

 states that he saw it occasionally at lower altitudes in winter. It is 

 possible that some individuals of the Sierra Nevada rufous-crowned 

 populations move upward when their foothill breeding grounds become 

 very hot and dry in late summer. Such movements are well known 

 among more conspicuous species in California, and have been suggested 

 for rufous-frowned sparrows in the arid southwest by A. R. Phillips 

 (1951a), but confirmatory data for California have not been obtained. 



