I2_i Batchelder, Winter Notes from New Mexico. [April 



()n my arrival (December 4) J. caniceps was much the more 

 numerous, there being three or tour of them to one y. orcgoiins, 

 bul as the time went on its numbers diminished, while those of 

 y. oregonus increased, until by the middle of the month far the 

 greater part were of the latter species. I think they were all 

 slowly migrating, and that y. caniceps went first. As its ranks 

 were gradually thinned out, fresh arrivals of y. oregonu-s filled the 

 vacant places, so that their abundance on the whole remained 

 about the same. Their numbers varied a little, however, from 

 time to time ; some days there were more Juncos than on others. 

 December 20, in particular, I noticed them in unusually large 

 numbers. Whether this had any connection with the fact that 

 we had a snowstorm the following day. is one of those things 

 that unfortunately cannot be proved. 



These great stretches of weeds were favorite resorts, too, of the 

 Pine Finches ( Chrysomitris pinus) ; frequently at my approach a 

 flock of perhaps fifty would rise from the weeds where they had 

 been completely hidden as they clung to them feasting on their 

 multitude of seeds. Then for a long time they would circle 

 around overhead, sometimes going as far as the further side 

 of the canon, again confining themselves to a much smaller 

 orbit, their circles varying from a hundred yards to a quarter 

 of a mile in diameter. Finally they would settle in some other 

 weed patch a short distance oil", or even in a pine on the edge 

 of the hills, unless they decided that their suspicions of impend- 

 ing danger were well founded, and so disappeared behind some 

 hill as they sought another feeding ground elsewhere. Some- 

 times the flock as it circled round and round would break up 

 into two, one of which would, after a while, either depart to 

 some more distant place or return ami mingle with the other. 



In crossing these level stretches, the Gallinas, in its hurrying 

 course, has cut its channel down through the superficial deposits, 

 of which they are formed, to a considerable depth, and along the 

 banks thus made there grows a fringe of bushes in which I 

 occasionally found a solitan Song Sparrow {Melospiza Jasciata 

 montana) that dodged back and forth with a restless shyness that 

 made its life by no means an easy sacrifice. Here. too. one day 

 (December 12) 1 came across an immature Zonotrichia inter- 

 media, the only one of this species met with during my sta\ . 

 Possibly it was merely a straggler there, for a bird naturally of 



