596 ANIMAL LIFE IN THE YOSEMITE 



El Portal, and on slopes above Coulterville. In fall recorded once at Tuolumne Meadows, 

 and commonly at Glen Aulin, and, on eastern slope, on Tioga road near Warren Fork 

 of Leevining Creek and on Williams Butte. During summer lives in forest, chiefly amid 

 red firs, males singing at tops of trees, females nesting on ground. At other seasons 

 frequents berry-producing trees and shrubs. Solitary or loosely gregarious. 



Well rewarded are those nature lovers who upon visiting the Yosemite 

 climb to the slopes far above the Valley floor to listen to the song of the 

 Townsend Solitaire. The bird may be sought for with confidence in the 

 deep fir forest just south of Glacier Point, or on the timbered slopes above 

 Yosemite Point and along the Eagle Peak trail. The song season is not, 

 as with many birds, restricted to the spring and early summer; but the 

 autumn and even winter witnesses occasional outbursts of song, fully as 

 melodious as those of the summer, and more impressive in the prevailing 

 chill and silence. 



The plain gray coloration and comparatively long tail of the Townsend 

 Solitaire readily distinguish it from all other birds save perhaps the female 

 or young of the California Pine Grosbeak, The solitaire has in addition 

 a narrow white marking on the tail, a buff bar on the wing which shows 

 clearly when the bird is in flight, and a small bill; any or all of these 

 features will serve to distinguish it from the grosbeak. (See pi. 11a.) 

 Furthermore, the solitaire keeps to the Canadian and Transition zones, 

 whereas the pine grosbeak rarely strays from the higher Hudsonian 

 Zone; the two will therefore not likely be seen in the same place. Young 

 (Juvenal) solitaires are heavily mottled on the breast, much in the manner 

 of thrushes and young robins, thereby perhaps indicating their relation- 

 ship; but this 'familj^' resemblance (in a systematic sense) disappears at 

 the first fall molt, and the young then become indistinguishable from their 

 parents. 



The Townsend Solitaire as a species does not, in the Yosemite region, 

 make much of a change in its haunts with the passage of the seasons. In 

 summer the majority are to be found in and about the red fir forests of 

 the Canadian Zone. At other times of year the birds forage and live in 

 the western junipers which often grow close by on rocky slopes, or else 

 they drop to the Transition Zone where mistletoe berries on the golden 

 oaks afford bounteous forage. There are no solitaires in Yosemite Valley 

 during the summer months, but with the coming of winter the oaks on 

 the talus slopes become tenanted by numbers of the birds. We ourselves 

 did not find the species at any station lower than El Portal (altitude 2000 

 feet) where it was seen but once, on March 1, 1916 ; but Mr. Donald D. 

 McLean reports that solitaires are fairly common on the slopes above 

 Coulterville (at 2000 feet altitude or higher) during some winters. The 

 movements of the species during the winter are controlled chiefly by the 

 food supply, in the form of berries. 



