ASHY RUFOU&-CROWNED SPARROW 943 



chit i wit chit it, the bird said, all at a breath; and it may be that there 

 is an average shade of difference in the insular song." 



Winter. — ^Clarence B. Linton (1908b) seems to have pubhshed the 

 only note on this race at this season: "Mr. Willett and I each secured 

 a specimen in the brushy canyon near the south coast [of Santa Cruz 

 Islandl. In the early evening of December 16 I observed a flock of 40 

 or 50 birds feeding on a grassy hillside near Prisoners' [Harbor], 

 securing two specimens." This also seems to be the largest actual 

 estimate of numbers in one "flock" reUably recorded for the species 

 anywhere in California, although one is left without information as 

 to whether real gregarious behavior was involved or merely aggregation 

 in a good feeding area. 



Distribution 



Range. — The Santa Cruz rufous-crowned sparrow is resident on 

 Santa Cruz, Anacapa, and (formerly) Santa Catalina islands off 

 southwestern California. 



AIMOPHILA RUFICEPS CANESCENS Todd 



Ashy Rufous -crowned Sparrow 

 Contributed by Howard L. Cogswell 



Habits 



This race of the rufous-crowned sparrow as now defined by the 

 A.O.U. Check-list includes all the mainland populations from Santa 

 Barbara, Ventura, and northern Los Angeles counties southward well 

 into Baja Cahfornia — the area where the "coastal sage" plant associ- 

 ation (Epling and Lewis, 1942) the species favors was originally most 

 widespread. The general color tone of many of the shrubby plants in 

 this association is gray-green — white sage {Salvia apiana), California 

 sagebrush (Artemisia calif omica), and California buckwheat {Erio- 

 gonumjasciculatum Yar.foliolosum) ; many others among the herbaceous 

 plant components are bright green in winter and turn brown early in 

 the rainless summer season. Somewhere in relation to this complex 

 of environmental colors there is probably an adaptive significance in 

 the coloration of A. r. canescens which W. E. Clyde Todd (1922) 

 characterizes as: "Similar to Aimophila ruficeps ruficeps (Cassin), 

 but wing and tail longer and under parts less buffy, more grayish in 

 tone. Similar also to Aimophila ruficeps sororia Ridgway, but darker 

 above, and darker, more grayish, below. * * * A. ruficeps canescens 

 is really intermediate * * * between A. ruficeps ruficeps and A. 

 ruficeps sororia, but is grayer than either * * *." 



64&-737— 68 — pt. 2 23 



