i8S6.] Mkarns on iAe Birds 0/ Arizona. 2QQ 



I found this Thrasher tolerably common in the vicinity of Fort 

 Mojave in May, upon both the Arizona and Nevada shores of the 

 Colorado, and also at the Needles farther down the River, in 

 California, where the species has been taken as far south as Fort 

 Yuma, opposite the mouth of the Gila River. Near the Colora- 

 do River, at the mouth of Diamond Creek, it was found later in 

 the season ; but, farther east along the Colorado Cailon, I did 

 not meet with it. Even in the deep, warm caiion of Cataract 

 Creek, where Mockingbirds were singing in November long after 

 their departure from the Verde Valley, none were found. Dr. 

 Palmer found it breeding at Saint George, in Southern Utah. It 

 is very abundant in the Agua Fria Valley, west of the Rio Verde, 

 and is found all the way to the confluence of that stream with the 

 Gila River, from which point I have traced it as far eastward 

 along the Gila as the mouth of the San Carlos River, near which 

 many wei'e heard singing among the dreary sandhills of the 

 Indian Reservation, and thence northward through Tonto Basin. 

 Others have found it along the Gila in New Mexico ; but I have 

 only i;oticed it farther east, about Deming, New Mexico, in the 

 dry course of the Mimbres River, near the point where it was 

 first discovered by Dr. T. C. Henry of the Army. 



Unlike the three remaining species, it is rarely found in desert 

 country away from streams. When crossing the hundred miles 

 of desert between the Gila River near Maricopa and Tucson, 

 it was not positively identified once, although I thought I saw 

 one near Ficacho Station, when returning in May. Along the 

 Santa Cruz and Rillito Rivers, near Tucson and Fort Lowell, 

 the species was again found in small numbers, and was abundant 

 thence, in suitable localities, as far east as Bowie Station, where 

 it was found to breed, as well as in the neighboring foothills of 

 the Chiricahua Mountains, where I found a nest containing two 

 newly-hatched young and an egg on the last day of April. The 

 young were on wing in the dry plain of San Simon Valley below. 

 From the abundance of this species there, I do not doubt that it 

 ranges southward into Mexico. 



Harporhynchus lecontei. Leconte's Thrasher. 



Toxostoma leconiei "Lav^k. Ann N. Y. Lye. V, Sept., 1851, p. 109 (near 

 Fort Yuma).— Baird, Stansbury's Rep. Expl. Gt. Salt Lake, Utah, 

 1853, P- 329 ("Gila River"). 



