GREEN-TAILED TOWHEE. 179 



California, of Oregon and Washington. In its nesting habits and traits it is said to be 

 the counterpart of our Eastern Towhee. 



On the Island of Guadalupe, Lower California, a closely allied species occurs, which 

 is known as the Guadalupe Towhee, Pipilo consobrinus Ridgw. 



GREEN-TAILED TOWHEE. 



Pipilo chlorurus Baird. 



Plate XX. Fig. 7. 



[j^HIS fine Towhee is a summer resident of the Rocky Mountains, north to eastern 

 Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, and west its range is limited by the 

 Sierra Nevada. Its winter home is Mexico, and probably also the lower districts of 

 Arizona etc. Like all its allies it is an inhabitant of the dense shrubbery which it 

 imparts with life and beaUtyj Mr. Robert Ridgway, while accompanying the expedition 

 of Clarence King as Uaturalist, found it very generally distributed throughout the fertile 

 mountain portions of the interior. He first met with it in the ravines at the base of the 

 eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. On the high moUntaiti ranges it was a characteristic 

 bird and the best known singer, as well as one of the most abundant of the Finches, 

 being found in all bushy places, from the bases to the summits of the mountains. It is 

 exclusively a summer species, arriving at Carson City about the middle of April. He 

 describes the usual note of this bird as very peculiar, and, as nearly as can be described, 

 a sweet laughing utterance of the syllables keek-keek, a little iresembling the tweet of 

 a Canary, but very musical. This curious note was generally uttered when anything 

 unusual attracted its attention, such as the approach of an intruder. Then, with 

 elevated tail, and its very conspicuous red cap raised, it would hop familiarly and un- 

 suspiciously about. Mr. Ridgway says that it is a songster of high merit, in power and 

 variety ranking very little below the song of the Lark Sparrow. The song varies in 

 the modulations greatly with the individual, but the same general style is preserved. 

 At times it seems to have a slight resemblance to the song of Bewick's Wren. In the 

 early part of July, near Austin, in the canons of the mountains, Mr. Ridgway found these 

 birds breeding in the greatest abundance, and later in the same month a few of its nests 

 were found on the East Humboldt Mountains. All of its nests, with hardly an excep- 

 tion, were placed from eighteen inches to two feet above the ground,- among the thick 

 bushes of a species of Sytaphodcarpus, or snowberry, which grows in great abundance 

 upon the sides of the canons of those mountains. The maximum number of eggs was 

 four. It was also quite a common bird in the WahSatch Mountains, though less 

 abundant than the Spurred Towhee. The eggs are oval, neither end being apparently 

 much more rounded than the other. "The groundA:olor is white with a bluish tint, over 

 which is profusely diffused a cloud of fine dottings of a pinkish-drab. These markings 

 are occasionally so fine and so thickly distributed as to give to the tg^ the efppearaiice 



