DESERT BLACK-THROATED SPARROW 993 



Distribution 



Range. — Colorado and Oklahoma to central northern Mexico. 



Breeding range. — The Guadalupe black-throated sparrow breeds 

 from southeastern Colorado (Baca County) and northwestern Okla- 

 homa (Kenton) south through eastern New Mexico and western 

 Texas to northeastern Chihuahua and northwestern Coahuila (Sierra 

 del Carmen). 



Winter range. Winters in southern part of breeding range. 



AMPHISPIZA BILINEATA DESERTICOLA Ridgway 

 Desert Black-throated Sparrow 



PLATE 55 



Contributed by Richard C. Banks 



Habits 



This attractive little sparrow is a common dweller of the arid 

 southwest. As much as the currently accepted name refers to its 

 most prominent field mark, the often used alternate "desert sparrow" 

 refers to its most characteristic habitat. Herbert Brandt (1951) 

 combined these two features quite well when he referred to this 

 species as a "handsome, black-bibbed obligate of the hot, little- 

 watered areas." 



Joseph Grinnell, Joseph Dixon, and Jean M. Linsdale (1930), in 

 their report on the Lassen Peak Region of northern California, 

 emphasize the truly desert character of this bird which "seemed to 

 live in the driest, and apparently the hottest, areas in each neighbor- 

 hood." J. Grinnell (1932) observed this sparrow in Death Valley 

 and collected a specimen "from the ground beneath a desert holly 

 bush at about — 2S0 feet, less than 50 yards from the very edge of the 

 lowest part of the smk. . . . This last was the lowest occurrence of 

 any bird in Death Valley." In summarizing more recent records from 

 the Death Valley area, Roland H. Wauer (1962) mentioned that 

 "The average annual precipitation, since 1910, is 2.3 inches." Joseph 

 Grinnell (1914) further commented that "This is a bird of the upland 

 deserts; not one was seen in the riparian belt" along the lower Colorado 

 River Valley between southern California and Arizona. In the Lake 

 Mead region of southern Nevada, Gordon W. Gullion, Warren M. 

 Pulich and Fred G. Evenden (1959) characterize it as "one of the 

 ubiquitous birds of the creosote bush and desert scrub environments, 

 being distributed generally independently of available drinking 

 water." 



The summary of the habitat Joseph Grinnell and A. H, Miller 

 (1944) give for this species in California applies as well to most of its 



