BLACK ROSY FINCH. 45 



DESCRIPTION: Male, adult: Rosy-red; feathers of the back, dark-centred; wings and tail, blackish, the 

 former with two conspicuous white cross-bars. Bill, horn-color; both mandibles falcate, with crossed 

 points. The shade of red varies greatly, but is never bricky or cinnabar, as in the other species of 

 Loxia.— Female and young: Olive-brown, the feathers dark-centred; rump, safiron or gamboge- 

 yellow; wing-bars, present. 



Length, 5.75 to 6.00 inches; wing, 3.40; tail, 2.25 inches, forked. 



BLACK ROSY FINCH, 



Leucosticte atrata Ridgway. 



Plate XXII. 



)ROF. R. Ridgway sends me the following account on this rare and beautiful bird: 

 1^ "The first specimen of Aiken's Rosy Finch brought to the notice of ornithologists 

 was obtained September 20, 1870, by the collector of the United States Geological 

 Survey, under Dr. F. V. Hayden, on the Uintah Mountains. This grand range 

 trends exactly at right angles w^ith the meridian of 110°, along the south-western 

 border of Wyoming, and forms part of the boundary line w^hich separates the above- 

 named territory from Utah. On which slope, or in what part, of the range in question 

 the specimen w^as procured, is not known. It was described, in 'History of North 

 American Birds' (Vol. I, p. 505), as the young of i. tephrocotis, -with, the remark, how^- 

 ever, that 'were it not unmistakably a bird of the year it would be considered almost 

 a distinct species, so different is it from adult specimens of the Gray-crowned Leucosticte.' 

 "At the comparatively recent date w^hen this first mention of the present species, 

 wrongly identified, was published, the birds of this interesting genus w^ere, with the 

 exception of L. griseonucba, little known, probably less than two dozen specimens 

 representing the entire material contained in public museums or private collections. 

 During the winter of 1874 — '75, how^ever, the writer, when preparing his monograph 

 of the genus*, w^as able to examine at one time more than four hundred specimens, 

 embracing large series of L. tephrocotis, L. tephrocotis littoralis, and L. australis, 

 besides three examples of L. attata — more than half of w^hich were generously loaned 

 for the purpose by Mr. Charles E. Aiken, of Fountain (now of Colorado Springs), 

 Colorado. At the present time, the three forms above-named, and also L. griseonucba, 

 are common in collections, but L. atrata is still rare, while nothing has yet been learned 

 as to its range during the breeding season. Speculations as to its summer home would, 

 considering the paucity of our present knowledge, be idle ; but it seems not improbable 

 that its breeding grounds may be located in the unknown Rocky Mountain region of 

 British America, or perhaps even within our own territory." 



NAMES: Black Rosy Finch, Black Leucosticte, Black Gray-crowned Leucosticte; Aiken's Rosy Pinch. 

 SCIENTIFIC NAMES: LEUCOSTICTE ATRATA Ridgw. (1884). Leucosticte tephrocotis (1874). 



* "Monograph of the genns Leucosticte, Swainson; or, Gray-crowned Purple Finches." By R. Ridgway. (Bull. U. S. 

 Geol. & Geog. Surv. Terr. No. 2, sec. ser., pp. 51—82. May 11, 1875.) 



