924 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 2 



near the Upper Sonoran Zone. Occasionally one flies up onto a bush 

 or a low oak limb when danger threatens his family or to sing, but 

 most of its life is spent on the ground, except perhaps at night. In 

 Mexico the species' habitat is more variable locally (PhiUips, 1962). 



In the Huachuca Mountains, Ariz., Frank C. WiUard (1912b) 

 found the species "most common on the scantily covered lower ridges 

 and foothills, where scattering oaks, madrona, and scrubby mountain 

 mahogany are the only trees, together with plenty of bear grass and 

 mescal plants. They much prefer slopes with a southerly exposure," 

 which of course are the less heavily vegetated slopes. The same 

 preference for grassy, south-facing slopes is mentioned by F. M. Bailey 

 (1923). 



The haunts of scottii are not those generally favored by man. Only 

 W. E. D. Scott has actually lived among them. Thus it is not 

 surprising that information is still scanty on a species that keeps well 

 hidden behind gxass, brush, or rocks most of the time. In the un- 

 spoiled Arizona of 1876 Aiken (1937) found it "one of the most 

 common and characteristic birds" at Seven-mile Hill, near Fort 

 Apache. "The true home is in a secluded little ravine opening into a 

 larger ravine or canon, and if the latter contains a stream, so much the 

 better. I have found them breeding, however, several miles from 

 any water. I have never found them anywhere there was not the 

 coai'se mountain bunch grass of the country grooving. A few low 

 bushes and perhaps an old dead fallen tree are usually present in this 

 sparrow's home." 



In this species we find to a lesser extent the same problem of year- 

 to-year variation in breeding season that so complicates the study of 

 the related A. carpalis, the rufous-winged sparrow. But luckily 

 A. ruficeps has a higher, more uniform environment and normally 

 nests earlier, so the contrast between normal and abnormal years is 

 less striking. On the other hand, interpretation is correspondingly 

 more difficult. 



Few if any climatic data are available for the haunts of the rufous- 

 crowned sparrow. The reader must refer to the chart given for 

 Tucson rainfall under A. carpalis carpalis. This chart, of course, is 

 less exact when apphed to the home of A. ruficeps in the surrounding 

 mountains, where rainfall is greater, but the trends should be roughly 

 parallel. (The year 1936, not shown on the chart, was marked by 

 heavy snowfall at Flagstaff in late March.) 



Spring. — W. E. D. Scott (1886) saw rufous-crowned sparrows most 

 commonly from the last of February to mid-October in the Santa 

 Catalina Mountains, Ariz. He apparently thought this was due to 

 emigration of part of the population in winter, but it seems more 

 Hkely that March to October is the period of sexual and family ac- 



