1920] Sivarth: Revision of Avian Genus Passerella 151 



and one in almost complete first winter plumage. The last mentioned 

 (no. 16253, Mus. Vert. Zool.), in perfectly fresh, unfaded plumage, 

 is of intensely deep brown coloration, about clove brown on the head, 

 and very slightly more castaneous on the lower back. It is much more 

 heavily marked below than is the case in townsendi, the dark markings 

 being so nearly confluent across the breast that in this case it is the 

 white ground color that shows through as interrupted markings. The 

 lateral under parts and the dark spots on the breast are dull and sooty, 

 with but a suggestion of reddish. 



The three juveniles exhibit some diversity of color. In the darkest 

 of them (no. 16252, Mus. Vert. Zool.) the general coloration is bister, 

 as compared with snuff brown in typical young townsem^di; the mark- 

 ings below are so extensive, and the ground color so very little paler 

 than these markings, that it appears almost "solid" brown below. 

 The other two young (nos. 16251, 16254) are less heavily marked and 

 not so dark-colored, but they are still appreciably darker than town- 

 sendi at the same stage. 



Fidiginosa (speaking now of the non-typical birds previously 

 described) is a rare winter visitant to the northern coast region of 

 California. The earliest arrival noted is one from Fortuna, Humboldt 

 County, September 19; the latest in the spring, one from southeast 

 Farallone Island, May 31. As the subspecies had been represented 

 in local collections heretofore only by an occasional specimen (nearly 

 all from the Humboldt Bay region, included among large series of 

 townsendi), it was rather unexpected that in the fall of 1918 there 

 should be a sudden influx of the birds into the San Francisco Bay 

 region. On October 1, 1918, R. M. Hunt, of the Museum of Vertebrate 

 Zoology, noted numbers of fox sparrows in the hills east of the Uni- 

 versity Campus. The following day he returned to the place and 

 collected six of the birds. Four of the six proved to be fuliginosa. 

 On October 18 four more fox sparrows were collected at the same 

 place, and three of them were fidiginosa. Later collecting failed to 

 disclose more of these dark-colored birds. On September 26, 1918, 

 J. Grinnell collected an immature female fuliginosa at Morro, San 

 Luis Obispo County. In the light of these several captures, and con- 

 sidering the absence of the subspecies in the extensive series of fox 

 sparrows available and collected in the San Francisco Bay region 

 during previous years, there seems to be evidence of a rather unusual 

 "wave" of this bird. There are certain other birds, more con- 

 spicuous in actions and appearance (the varied thrush is a good 



