DESERT BLACK-THROATED SPARROW 999 



My impression of the voice, heard mostly in Ba ja Cahfornia, Mexico, 

 is of a longer, more warbling song, and agrees best Anth Mrs. Florence 

 M. Bailey's (1923) description from the Santa Rita Mountains of 

 Arizona. In this area, she states, "The song may be rendered as 

 chee-whee, whit, wher'r'r'r'r, cha, cha, cha, and also chee cha cher'r'r'r'r 

 cheer 



Notes other than the song are rarely mentioned in accounts of this 

 bird. W. P. Taylor (1912) states that "Low 'chips' were heard 

 which were finally traced to a desert sparrow which had its beak full 

 of insects and was perching on a rock." 



Field marks. — The combination of white facial strips and jet-black 

 throat will serve to identify this small sparrow. The white tips to the 

 outer tail feathers may be helpful in identification at times, but are 

 seldom seen, even when the bird is in flight. The sexes are similar. 



Enemies. — In the Providence Mountains of California (Johnson, 

 Bryant, and Miller, 1948) "The nests were seldom more than two 

 feet above the ground, and thus were A\dthin the reach of most ground- 

 dwelUng predators. Near Cima on May 13, 1938, a red racer {Coluber 

 jiagellum) was found just after it had swallowed three half-growTi 

 young from a nest in a low bush." 



Florence M. Bailey (1906) recorded a mammalian predator at a 

 nest: "One June morning in New Mexico as I was going thru a grove 

 of small round junipers, Anth spirits Ufted by the bright song from 

 the top of one of the trees, my steps were arrested and I gazed \Adth 

 dismay upon a beautiful little nest rudely torn from its place in the 

 juniper, and the ground below stre\\Ti with feathers of the brooding 

 mother bird. The horrid tragedy was probably no older than the 

 night for the wind had not had time to blow away the feathers, and 

 tracks tho blurred by the night's rain were fresh enough to fix the 

 blame upon the marauder — a coyote or lynx." 



Cowbu'ds sometimes parasitize nests of black-throated sparrows, 

 Herbert Friedmann (1963) refers to two instances of such parasitism 

 by Molothrus ater ohscurus near Tucson, Ariz. 



Wliere both the black-throated sparrow and its relative the Bell or 

 sage sparrow (Amphispiza belli) nest in the same area, the two species 

 may compete for territory. J. M. Linsdale (1938) reports an incident 

 in Nevada AAhere "a few minutes earlier an individual thought to be 

 the male of the pair had driven a sage spari'ow from a sage bush 20 

 feet from the nest site." W. P. Taylor (1912) also reports that 

 "a desert sparrow was on at least one occasion seen fighting with a 

 sage sparrow." A. W. Anthony (1 895) imphes that such conflicts may 

 have some bearing on the distribution of the two species, at least near 

 San Fernando in northern Baja Cahfornia. He states that ^'A. belli 

 takes the place, to a large extent, of bilineata on the coast, crowding 



