THE FRESNO DISTRICT DEFINED 



The above term has been apphed in this paper to an area of which the city 

 of Fresno is the center. The boundaries of this district, which have been arbi- 

 trarily fixed by the author, are, in some cases, not well defined ; but it has been 

 the writer's intention to include in this work notes from the floor of the valley 

 only ; and where occasional references have been made to stations outside of 

 these limits they have been used with the belief that they might add to the gen- 

 eral knowledge concerning the distribution of the particular species under con- 

 sideration. 



In general it may be said that the limits of the district here concerned are 

 marked on the west by Firebaugh at the north and Wheatville at the south. To 

 the east of Fresno a line might be drawn along the base of the Sierra Nevada 

 foothills, beginning at Friant on the north and extending south through Center- 

 ville to Reedley. The San Joaquin River forms a natural northern boundary, 

 while Laton and Riverdale are the most southern stations. This region lies in 

 the exact geographical center of the state of California, with an average eleva- 

 tion of not over four hundred feet. It will not be surprising, then, to note that 

 the majority of the birds listed are characteristic of the Lower Sonoran life zone, 

 with species from higher belts occurring as migrants or winter visitants. 



Within the Fresno district there are no natural woods with the exception 

 of the oaks, willows, and sycamores along the San Joaquin River, the oaks and 

 willows in the Kings River bottom, and a fringe of willows and cottonwoods 

 that are found along some of the larger sloughs and canals. A growth of splen- 

 did valley oaks along the southern edge of the district, is a field scarcely as yet 

 touched by any of the bird students of Fresno County ; and that region, together 

 with much of the bottom land along the Kings River from Centerville to Reed- 

 ley, should furnish a wealth of interesting material if systematically worked. 

 Personally, the author has spent the greater part of his all too little spare time 

 in the highly cultivated and thickly settled section about Fresno, with occasional 

 visits to other parts of the valley. 



