Notes on the Plumage of North American Sparrows 



TWENTY-FOURTH PAPER 

 By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



(See Frontispiece) 



The species of the genera Leucosticte, Fringillauda, and M ontejringilla are 

 so closely allied that Sharpe places them all in the last-named genus, which, 

 thus constituted, contains twenty-five species and sub-species of which no less 

 than twenty are found in the Old World, chiefly in the mountains of Asia. 

 Our species, therefore, have doubtless entered North America through the 

 Alsutian Islands and Alaska, whence they have extended southward along 

 the summits of the Coast Range to California, and the Rocky Mountains 

 to New Mexico. 



Mr. Fuertes's plate accurately represents these birds, but their charac- 

 teristics may be summarized as follows, it being understood that females 

 average somewhat duller than males: 



i. General color dark chocolate; nape and cheeks gray. Aleutian Rosy 

 Finch {Leucosticte griseonucha) . 



2. Reddish brown, nape only gray. Gray-crowned Rosy Finch {Leu- 

 costicte tephrocotis tephrocotis*). 



3. Reddish brown, nape and cheeks gray. Hepburn's Rosy Finch {Leu- 

 costicte tephrocotis littoralis). 



4. Reddish brown, no gray on head. Brown-capped Rosy Finch {Leu- 

 costicte australis). 



5. Brownish black, nape only gray. Black Rosy Finch {Leucosticte 

 atratus). 



Material is lacking to describe the molts and seasonal plumages of these 

 five forms. It is more than probable, however, that the description of one will 

 serve for all, and the appended outline relates, therefore, chiefly to the Gray- 

 crowned Rosy Finch. 



In juvenal plumage, Rosy Finches are dull rusty gray below, browner above, 

 with no crown cap, no rose in the body plumage, and but little in the wings or 

 tail; the greater coverts and inner wing- feathers are conspicuously margined 

 with bufiy or brownish. 



At the postjuvenal molt, all the body plumage and lesser wing-coverts are 

 lost, the rest of the wing-feathers and the tail being retained. The bird now 

 has the black cap with gray margin; the lesser wing-coverts are rosy, and the 

 plumage in general resembles that of the adult in winter, except for the buffy 

 instead of rosy margins to the greater wing-coverts and inner wing-feathers. 



*Mr. Joseph Grinnell ('Condor,' XV, ioi3,pp. 26-79) separates the Gray-crowned 

 Rosy Finch of the Californian Sierras from the Gray-crowned Rosy Finch of the Rockies 

 as a new race under the name Leucosticte tephrocotis dawsoni, and comparison of speci- 

 mens from Eldorado County, California, with others from Alberta, in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, supports his views. 



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