The Spotted Towhees 



Range of P. m. montanus. — The southern Rocky Mountain region from Wyoming 

 south to Tamaulipas, Mexico, and west south of the Great Basin to the desert ranges 

 of eastern California. 



Distribution in California. — Known only from the Panamint Mountains, 

 in Inyo County, where breeding. 



Authorities. — Fisher (Pipilo maculatus megalonyx), N. Am. Fauna, no. 7, 

 1893, p. 102, part (Panamint Mts.) ; Grinnell, Condor, vol. xx., 1918, p. 87 (Panamint 

 Mts.; crit.). 



SPURRED TOWHEE, MALE 



THE SPOTTED Towhee bulks large in the economy of the under- 

 world. He is, in fact, its acknowledged prince; not, of course, in the 

 Mephistophelian sense, but as the undoubted aristocrat among those 

 humble folk who skulk under dark ferns, thread marvelous mazes of 

 interlacing sticks and stalks, sort over the leafy wastage of the careless 

 trees, and understand the foundations of things generally. To really get 

 Master Towhee's point of view, one must be willing to creep on hands 

 and knees among the bristling stems of mountain lilac and chamise 

 of a southern mesa, or else go belly-wise through the rootage and cast- 

 off duffle of a northern forest. It is a wonderful world the serpent 

 sees (albeit a mussy one), a basic, essential world, where all flesh meets 



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