Mee | Swartu, Marsh Wrens of California. 51D 
Nevada: Lovelock, 1; Quinn River Crossing, 1. 
Idaho: Nampa, 6. 
British Columbia; Cariboo Road, 1. 
Total, 82. 
Remarks.— The known breeding range of the western marsh 
wren in California is very limited, being merely the restricted 
northeastern corner of the State, a region which shows strongly 
Great Basin faunal affinities. In winter, however, plesius is per- 
haps the most abundant of any form of the species, occurring in 
numbers over a large part of the state. It is an especially numer- 
ous winter visitant in the San Diegan district of southern Cali- 
fornia. In this region summer is the dry season, a period of such 
excessive aridity that birds with the needs and proclivities of the 
marsh wrens are closely limited as to habitat, being restricted to 
extremely circumscribed areas about the few suitable permanent 
streams and sloughs. In winter this is all changed. Abundant 
rains often transform what were dry fields and pastures into ponds 
and marshes, while every roadside ditch is running full, and 
bordered with dense vegetation. In consequence, the visiting 
marsh wrens are enabled to scatter widely over the country. It 
may be that the resident birds even at this time adhere somewhat 
closely to their restricted summer habitat, but, however that may 
be, it is the writer’s experience that in southern California indis- 
criminate winter collecting of marsh wrens in the places where 
they are most easily obtained, will produce several examples of 
plesius to one of the resident paludicola. 
Going northward in California there is a great and abrupt 
lessening of numbers of the subspecies plestus as the San Diegan 
region is left behind. There are a few specimens at hand from 
various scattered points: One from Los Bafios, in the central San 
Joaquin Valley; one from Paicines and two from Palo Alto, from 
the coast region south of San Francisco Bay; one from Berkeley; 
two from Point Reyes and Tomales Point, Marin County. It is 
worth noting that there is not a single example of this subspecies 
in the extensive series of marsh wrens collected in the Suisun 
region. These facts are clearly illustrative of the winter range of 
plesius in California, with its metropolis in the southern end of the 
state (both on the deserts and in the San Diegan region) and with 
