268 BULLETIN" 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



in the trees, and its song is quite distinctive. One of its two whitish 

 wing bars is often inconspicuous or worn away to obsolescence, so 

 that it shows only one. 



VIREO VICINOR Coucs 

 GRAY VIREO 



CONTKIDUTED BY WENDELL TaBER 



HABrrs 



Parched and barren foothills of the higher mountains baking in 

 the searing heat of the interior of southern California — such is the 

 favorite haunt of the gray vireo. Camped near the upper edge of 

 the shelf rising sharply in some 3 or 4 miles from the floor of the 

 Mohave Desert to the almost sheer-rising massive wall of the San 

 Gorgonio Mountains, I arose one frigid May 18 when the thermometer 

 was most certainly in the low forties if not in the thirties and started 

 in pursuit of what was obviously a gray vireo singing joyously nearby. 

 Cold or heat, it seemed to matter little. A few minutes of quiet trail- 

 ing with the inevitable tantalizing fleeting glimpses were finally re- 

 warded : the bird appeared on the outside of a bush and greeted me 

 with the full benefit of his song, which was rendered even more 

 superb by the unusual setting. I have spent far more time chasing 

 down a Canada warbler deeply intrenched in a boggy forest in the 

 East, as well as many others of our eastern forest dwellers, and can 

 but wonder whether the well-known elusivencss of the gray vireo is 

 not merely a matter of comparison with other western species in a 

 country where low, dense foliage is comparatively lacking. 



Other gray vireos were singing in the vicinity. The terrain was a 

 dry wash several hundred feet above the Mohave and within perhaps 

 a mile of the mountain bulwark. Juniper and cholla cactus were the 

 most common forms of vegetation. Other birds in the immediate 

 vicinity were western gnatcatchers, Lawrence's goldfinches, and desert 

 and black-chinned sparrows. Unpleasantly, if not significantly, a 

 good-sized rattlesnake turned up altogether too near our sleeping 

 spot. 



Grinnell and Swarth (1913) limit the distribution of the gray 

 vireo in the San Jacinto region of southern California to the 

 ^^Adenostoma minor association, of the Chaparral major association, 

 of the San Dicgan faunal division, of the Upper Sonoran Zone," 

 chiefly on the Pacific side of the mountain. They found the species 

 between about 3,000 and 6,500 feet altitude. On one occasion the 

 species was among pinyons. Of primary importance, they bring out 

 the fact that being preeminently an inhabitant of dry chaparral the 

 species conflicts with no other member of the genus. On one occasion 

 this species, the western warbling vireo, and the Cassin vireo were all 



