The Golden-crowned Sparrow 

 No. 58 



Golden-crowned Sparrow 



A. 0. U. No. 557. Zonotrichia coronata (Pallas). 



Description. — Adults: A broad crown-patch pyrite yellow, changing abruptly 

 to ashy gray on occiput; this bounded on each side by broad stripe of silky black, 

 meeting fellow on forehead; remaining upperparts grayish brown, broadly streaked 

 with black on back, more or less edged with dull reddish brown (wood-brown, or sayal 

 brown) on back, wing-coverts and tertials, glossed with olive on rump and tail; middle 

 and greater coverts tipped with white, forming conspicuous bars; chin, throat, sides 

 of head, and breast smoky gray (light smoky gray on throat to light grayish olive on 

 breast), with obscure vermiculations of dusky, shading into whitish of belly; sides 

 washed with buffy brown which becomes pure on flanks and crissum. Bill blackish 

 above, paler below; feet pale; iris brown. Immature: Without definite head-stripe; 

 crown broadly dull olive-yellow (between citrine and olive lake), clearest on forehead, 

 elsewhere sharply flecked with blackish in wedge-shaped marks, giving way to grayish 

 brown or dull chestnut behind, and to blackish on sides (variably according to age?); 

 washes of underparts strengthened. Length of adult male about 190.5 (7.50); wing 

 79 (3. 11); tail 76 (3) ; bill 12.2 (.48) ; depth at base 8 (.32) ; tarsus 24 (.95). Females 

 a little smaller. 



Recognition Marks. — Sparrow size; yellow of crown distinctive in any plumage. 



Nesting. — Does not breed in California. Nest and eggs not well described, 

 but doubtless much as in following species. 



General Range. — Pacific Coast region, breeding from central British Columbia 

 north to the Kowak River in Alaska; wintering casually from Puget Sound, and regu- 

 larly from central Oregon south to northern Lower California; in migrations irregularly 

 eastward to Alberta and Nevada, or even Colorado; accidental in Wisconsin. 



Distribution in California. — Common in winter, but subject to great local 

 variation in numbers, throughout the State but chiefly west of the Sierran divide. 

 Occurs on the Santa Barbara Islands, and casually upon the deserts, — Yermo(Lamb); 

 Palm Canyon, Jan. 27, 1913; a desultory lingerer in spring, — Pasadena, May 9 (Grin- 

 nell) ; Shandon, May 13, 1912; Farallons, June 2, 1911. 



Authorities. — Audubon (Emberiza atricapilla), Ornith. Biography, vol. v., 1839, 

 pp. 47-48; MaiUiard, J., Condor, vol. iii., 1901, pp. 78-79 (song) ; Fisher, W. K., Condor, 

 vol. iii., 1901, p. 79 (song) ;Beal, Biol. Surv. Bull., no. 34, 1910, pp. 78-79 (food) \Bassett, 

 Condor, vol. xxii., 1920, pp. 136-137, 3 figs, (song variations). 



GOLD is, of course, the proper color for a crown, and it is a rash bird 

 which would flaunt any other shade of yellow in the face of our deter- 

 mined generalization. Nevertheless, the "gold" of coronata s crown is not 

 golden at all, but pyrite yellow, a shade produced by an admixture of 

 about equal parts of yellow and black. And so far is coronata from being a 

 rash bird (save for the shotgun, which is "no fair"), it will probably take 

 the reader about three years to determine the correctness of my state- 

 ment. For regal, though he be, this sparrow is very discreet in the matter 



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