1242 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 paet 2 



were seen in brush patches m the bottoms of rocky canyons and on 

 ridges, but the greatest numbers were in situations * * * where 

 stands of tall and fairly dense sagebrush grew in isolated shallow 

 basins among rocky, pinon-covered hills." 



F. Stephens writes in a letter to D. A. Cohen (1899) : "In a general 

 way this species is more or less distributed over the brush-covered 

 hillsides (chemisal) of Southern California, between 1,000 and 3,000 

 feet altitude. * * * l have seen smaU companies of fewer than a 

 dozen birds in the migration, but usually not more than one or two 

 pairs inhabit any one hillside." 



PhiUips, Marshall, and Monson (1964) call it a "fairly common 

 summer resident in Upper Sonoran chaparral across Arizona," while in 

 New Mexico according to Ligon (1961) it is found up to 6,000 or 7,000 

 feet and "seems to prefer the brushy, rugged mountains and ridges, 

 shunning forested areas." 



The species appears to be relatively uncommon wherever it is 

 found, but this may be a result of its scattered distribution. As 

 Dawson (1923) writes: "Like so many of the chaparral- and sage- 

 haunting species, the Black-chinned Sparrow colonizes loosely. Here 

 on a hillside may be found half a dozen pairs, and upon the heels of 

 this good fortune, a silence of a dozen miles, or forty, may ensue." 



Nesting. — Although little is known of the nesting activities of the 

 black-chinned sparrow, all writers agree that the nest is of typical 

 Spizella character. Dawson (1923) describes it as "a compact cup of 

 dried grasses, lined — or not — with horsehair; placed in sage or other 

 shrub of the dwarf chaparral, often well concealed." 



In a letter to Mr. Bent, Wilson C. Hanna writes that the nests are 

 sometimes fairly compact but usually of rather loose construction, and 

 long grass stems may extend 4 inches from the rim. A "typical" nest 

 is "made of long grass stems in loose construction with lining of 

 similar material and shredded fiber; outside diameter 4 inches, inside 

 diameter 1.75 inches, outside depth 2.75 inches, inside depth 1.3 

 inches. In one case the outside diameter is recorded as 8 inches by 12 

 inches over all. The inside diameter may be up to 1.75 inches. The 

 lining often has long strands of hair." 



James B. Dixon of Escondido, Calif., in a letter to Wendell Taber, 

 says that in 50 years of field work he has found only three nests. 

 One of these, found on June 6, 1937 near Hesperia, San Bernardino 

 County, Calif., was 3 feet up in a sage brush. The nest was composed 

 of dry, hard weed stems on the outside, and lined with soft vegetable 

 fiber and a few feathers. The site, on the edge of the Mohave Desert, 

 was at an altitude of about 4,000 feet. Dixon also mentions a nest 

 C. S. Sharp found in 1907 in Escondido at the remarkably low altitude 

 of 800 feet above sea level. 



