The Green-tailed Towhee 



of a sage-bush or a greasewood clump, or, it may be, a stand of buck- 

 brush, and that the bird almost invariably glides off upon approach, 

 in silence and with an evasive rapidity which baffles the eye of all but 

 the most expert. Having been shown my bird's nest in the heart of 

 a low-lying sage (Artemisia tridentata) I retired for half an hour, then 

 returned rapidly with senses on the alert. At six feet a something de- 

 tached itself from the marked bush and scuttled away for a distance 

 of 30 feet, all in perfectly plain view, but so almost instantaneously as 

 to leave only a faint flare of color. After that, silence. Except for 

 those telltale eggs I might have been persuaded that only a lizard had 

 shot away into the desert's depths. 



The nests themselves are rather insipid affairs, sturdy enough 

 as to the bowl proper, but lacking coherence or finish as to wall con- 

 struction. The closely crowding twigs of the parent bush are evidently 

 expected to do duty for walls. Occasional nests rest upon the ground, 

 but most of them are raised a foot or so above it. The eggs, finely 

 dotted with prosy brown, are inconspicuous enough at best. Once, 

 in the open sage west of Convict Creek, I flushed a Pacific Nighthawk, 

 but not being able to find her eggs quickly, I cast about for a suitable 

 twig to tag for a return trial. Cotton in hand I bent low and fumbled 

 with a denuded flower-spike of a greasewood, saw another a foot away 

 which reached a little higher, so turned and tied to it. Returning, an 

 hour later, I hunted in vain for the Nighthawk's eggs, and finally stooped 

 to retrieve the cotton marker. A rustle and a gleam and the Green-tail 

 flushed from under the very twig which I had first handled. I had 

 peered down into a nest with four eggs, unseeing, with my hand not over 

 ten inches away. 



By the time one has wrestled for six or eight seasons with this same 

 combination of impudence, tunefulness, artfulness, and furtiveness, the 

 Green-tailed Towhee comes to bulk large in the scheme of things. He 

 or she is a most unforgettable bird-person. 



In spite of the striking superficial differences which exist between 

 the Green-tailed Towhee and those members of the genus Pipilo with 

 which we in the United States happen to be acquainted, it is altogether 

 probable that the bird should be restored to a place in a larger group. 

 As Ridgway has pointed out, 1 chlorura possesses no color character not 

 found in at least one other member of the genus Pipilo; and the very fact 

 that this bird has these characters in common with the others would 

 seem to designate it as the typical and central member of the genus, 

 rather than an aberrant form. The separation, moreover, fails to take 

 account of the striking similarity in the birds' songs; and it altogether 



1 Auk, Vol. VII., 1890. pp. 193-194. 



389 



