2QA. Mearns o?i the Birds of Arizona. [July 



Comparison of these specimens with a very large series of adults taken 

 at all. seasons shows no sexual variation whatever in the plumage and 

 very little difference in size. Winter specimens in new plumage are some- 

 what darker, while summer examples become much bleached, and the 

 plumage worn to shreds, the rectrices having little left but their shafts. 

 About a dozen of the specimens before me are more or less strongly 

 washed with pale rusty yellow upon the under surface. 



A young nestling (No. 3026,$, June 16, 1884, Fort Verde, Arizona; E. 

 A. M.), in which the quills are only half grown out, has all of the markings 

 of the adult. The throat, black stripe below the ramus of the jaw, and 

 under tail-coverts are exactly as in adults; and the general plumage differs 

 only in having a redder, rustier tone, most pronounced upon the auricu- 

 lars, upper tail-coverts and tips of the rectrices. The abdomen is paler, 

 almost whitish. Legs more plumbeous than in adults. This slight dis- 

 crepancy in coloration is seen through a series of young specimens up to 

 the period of the autumnal moult, when they come out exactly like their 

 parents only fresher and darker, and can then only be distinguished from 

 fully adult examples in fresh plumage by anatomical characters. 



Dimensions. — Male. Length, 305; alar expanse, 326; wing, 100; tail, 

 143; culmen from base, 38; culmen from nostril, 30; gape, 42; tarsus, 34; 

 middle toe and claw, 30; ctaw alone, 8. Female. Length, 304; alar ex- 

 panse, 317 ; wing, 98 ; tail, 142 ; culmen from base, 38 ; culmen from nostril, 

 30; gape, 41 ; tarsus, 33 ; middle toe and claw, 30; claw alone, 8. 



Habits. — I first met this Thrasher on March 24, 1884, about 

 fifteen miles east of Prescott, when riding from Fort Whipple to 

 Fort Verde, Arizona. When we left Whipple in the morning 

 the ground was covered with snow ; but a ride of a few miles, 

 during which we descended several hundred feet, brought us to 

 a chano-ed climate. A few Crissal Thrashers were then occasion- 

 ally noted among the thickets of scrub oak, and their numbers 

 increased until we reached the Verde Valley. 



The Red-vented Thrasher is abundant all over the Verde 

 bottom land, preferring mesquite thickets and the vicinage of 

 streams. One of the first traits that we noticed about it was that 

 it possessed a song of very remarkable scope and sweetness, hav- 

 ing all the power of the Mockingbird, and an evenness and perfect 

 modulation which that bird may well envy. It is one of the few 

 birds that truly sing ; and it shares, in this Territory, this rare gift 

 with its three congeners — Bendire's, Palmer's and Le Conte's 

 Thrashers. It is no warbler of pretty ditties, nor yet a medley 

 singer like the Eastern Thrasher or the Mockingbird, but dis- 

 courses pure, natural music from the top of the tallest bushes, 

 where it perches, with its tail hanging down, in precisely the 

 same attitude as the Brown Thrasher of the East. Its season of 



