132 Tue Witson BULLeETIN—No. 75. 
THe Cuocorare TowHEE.—On October 25, 1910, after three 
weeks of fruitless effort I secured a bird in unique plumage, which 
I called the Chocolate Towhee. 
Iixtremely shy and skulking in his ways, dodging in and out of 
the tops of the felled trees where the withered leaves elung thick, 
now in the brush-heaps or through the wood-side bramble-patches, 
he had led me a merry and discouraging race full oft; nor yen- 
tured to drop a single note that would lead to his identity. Nor 
was it my fortune to get one satisfying view of him through the 
glasses. So I began to fear that he might flit for the south some 
fine night, and leave me a sadder but no wiser man. 
IIe was almost always alone, as though considered the black 
sheep of the family by his species, who did not appear to take 
kindly to his wild, furtive ways. 
Nature was evidently in sportive mood when she made him. but 
as is often the case with freaks, he was no improvement on the 
beautiful colors or elegant color pattern of the towhee, as every 
bird-lover knows him in thicket and forest. 
And the camera failed to give a definite conception of the odd 
mixing of dark brown and black in his plumage. 
The idea seemed to have been to make an out and out chocolate 
bird of him, but the black persisted. Evidently a male bird, his 
measurements tallied so closely with those of other males of his 
species as to require no comment. 
Ilis only white feather was a single one on his throat just be- 
low the bill. Otherwise the white was replaced by dark brown 
or chestnut—a shade or two deeper than normally—so that the en- 
tire throat, breast and belly, including the vent and under-tail 
coverts. were all of one color without shading. This dark brown 
replaced the ordinary black on rump and tail-coverts, which, how- 
ever, were marked or tipped with black. And the black of the 
back was irregularly splashed with brown. The crown and nape 
partook of the brown of the lower parts, extending around and 
uniting with it on the throat, but enclosing the black auriculars, 
lores, and line over the eye. The spot at the base of the primaries 
with the outer tail feathers, usually white, presented the palest 
brown in the plumage, being quite light. And there was brown 
where the primaries are normally edged with white, and likewise 
on the tertials. The greater coverts were also carefully edged 
with brown. The bill was dark horn instead of black as the male 
chewink. 
Thus in this bird we have the untire underparts captured by 
the brown, likewise the head, nape and rump, with the black re- 
duced to a scuare block on the back, on his wings and upper tail- 
feathers and the cheek spots. ERNEST W. VICKERS. 
