1926] Swa/rth: Birds and Mammals from the Atlin Region 131 



these birds were not seen along the wet bottom lands, but they fre- 

 quented the dry hillsides, where the trailing birch afforded the cover 

 they favored the most. They were at all times wary and hard to 

 approach, far more so than most small birds, and in contrast to the 

 actions of the several species of Spizella and ZoTwtrichia with which 

 they were associated. 



During the last week iri July and the first week in August, spotted 

 young were seen being fed by their parents, but mostly the young were 

 larger, undergoing the post-juvenal molt. The species might easily 

 be overlooked, for besides their habitual wariaess the birds are with 

 difficulty dislodged from the sheltering cover they frequent. If flushed 

 at a distance from the tops of the balsam thickets on which they often 

 perched when suspicious of danger (and they rarely permitted a near 

 approach), the timber-line sparrow might easily be overlooked amid 

 the tree sparrows, chipping sparrows, and even the Zonotrichias, 

 which were in the same surroundings and arising from the bushes 

 near at hand. When flushed they flew long distances, to dive into birch 

 thickets, tangled masses of shrubbery about waist high, and it was 

 rarely that a bird could be dislodged from such a refuge. They ran 

 beneath the shrubbery, to take flight at some distant point, and such 

 tactics, repeated over and over again, inevitably left the person in 

 pursuit floundering clumsily through entangling branches far behind. 



So, although the species was really abundant in some places, such 

 as on certain of the higher slopes of Spruce Mountain, we secured 

 relatively few specimens. 



Together, we collected twenty-three skins, as follows : adult male, 

 3; adult female, 4; immature, first winter plumage, 4; juvenal, 6; 

 molting from juvenal to first winter, 6. Fifteen of these (nos.- 44842- 

 44856) came to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Two of this series 

 have since been deposited in the United States National Museum. 



Junco hyemalis connectens Coues. Cassiar Junco 



Thirty-five specimens of junco were collected (nos. 44857-44891), 

 sixteen breeding adults (thirteen of these from Carcross), the 

 remainder comprising some streaked juveniles and adults and 

 immature in fall plumage. I am listing these all as of the subspecies 

 connectens.; but there are equivocal specimens in the series (among 

 migrants collected toward the end of the summer) that would fit as 

 readily into a series of hyemalis. 



