592 



NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



fellow," regardless of the hitter wind, from the top of a yellow mimosa then 

 in hloom, give utterance to a strain of sprightly and sweet notes, that would 

 compare fa^ orably witli those of many more famed songsters. 



Dr. Coues found tliis Sparrow very abundant in the southern and western 

 portions of Arizona, though mre at Fort Whipple, where tlie locality was 

 unsuited to it, as it seemed to prefer open plains, gmssy or covered with sage- 

 brush. 



Mr. J. H. Clarke, wlio met with these birds in Tamaulipas, Texas, and 

 New Mexico, speaks of them as abundant and widely distributed. He 

 found them on the lower Ifio Ornnde, but more abundantly in the interior, 

 seeming to prefer the stunted and sparse vegetation of the sand-hills and 

 dry plains to the cotton wood groves and willow thickets of the river val- 

 leys, where they were never seen. They would be very inconspicuous did 

 not the male occasionally perch himself on some topmost branch and pour 

 fortli a continuous strain of music. In the more barren regions they were 

 the almost exclusive representatives of the feathered tribes. 



Dr. Hee? manu first remarked this Finch near Tucson, in Arizona, where he 

 found it associated with other Sparrows in large flocks. They were flying 

 from l)ush to bush, alighting on the ground to pick up grass-seeds and in- 

 sects. They were quite iniraerous, and he traced them as far into Texas as 

 the Dead Man's Hole, between El Paso and San Antonio. 



Dr. Cooper found a few of these birds on the treeless and waterless moun- 

 tains that l^order the Colorado Valley, in pairs or in small companies, hopping 

 along the giound, under the scanty shrubbery. In crossing the Providence 

 Range, in May, Dr. Cooper found their nest, containing white eggs. 



Both species of Poospiza, the helli and the bilineata, according to Mr. 

 Eidgway, are entirely peculiar in their manners, habits, and notes. Botli, he 

 states, are birds characteristic of the arid artemisia plains of tlie Great Basin, 

 and, with the Erciaophila vornuta, are often the only birds met with on those 

 desert wastes. The two species, he adds, are quite uiillke in their habits and 

 manners. Tliey each have about the same extent of habitat, and even oft^n 

 frequent the same locality. While the P. hilineata is partial to dry sandy 

 situations, inhabiting generally tlie arid mesa extending from the river val- 

 leys back to the mountain?, the P. belli is almost confined to the more 

 thrifty gi*owth of the arteni, ia, as found in the damper valley portions. 

 Tlie P. belli is a resident species, and even through the severest winters is 

 found in abundance. The P. bilineata is exclusively a summer bird, one of 

 the latest to come from the South, and much the more shy of the two; 

 its manners also are quite different. 



Both birds have one common characteristic, which renders them worthy 

 of especial remark. This is the pecidiar delivery and accent, and the strange 

 sad tone of their spring song, which, though unassuming and simple, is in- 

 deed strange in the effect it produces. This song, so plaintive and mournful, 

 harmonizes Avith the dull monotony of tlie desert landscape. 



