The Spotted Towhees 



is due in part, no doubt, to a certain fatherly alertness manifested on behalf 

 of the clan. No sound or movement, whether hostile or friendly, escapes 

 his notice. If the birdman's entrance into the local bird setting be accom- 

 plished with a becoming modesty, he presently hears a mild, questioning 

 voice, me ay? or me ayuh? But if the man is unduly offensive, he hears 

 instantly an indignant marie, marie, which sends the clan scattering. But 

 when the bird-watcher glimpses the chief's costume, the secret of his 

 ascendancy is out. Fine feathers still do make fine birds. Black-and- 

 white and earth red, picked out here and there with white spots, "macu- 

 lations," make an impressive uniform, and one to which we all yield 

 cheerful respect. But the marvel is how anything so spick and span can 

 emerge from such a chaos; or how beauty can maintain itself in constant 

 association with bugs and slugs and the innumerable horribilia of the 

 Kingdom of Underfoot. 



Truth to tell, "Beauty" emerges from concealment as rarely as pos- 

 sible. It is modesty again which gives the teasing fillip to our curiosity, 

 and the elusiveness which makes itself ipso facto an object of perpetual 

 friendly quest. Only at mating time does the Spotted Towhee throw 

 caution to the winds. Then he mounts a sapling and drones away by the 

 hour. The song is perhaps best described as a musical churr, a thing of 

 slight beauty, and of interest merely for its variety and for the sprightly 

 animation of the performer. By "variety" one uncovers the most fas- 

 cinating problem in connection with the Spotted Towhee, the problem 

 of geographical song variation. For the song of the individual Towhee 

 is inflexible, always the same, or at least self-consistent. But as one 

 travels from place to place in the West, he notes emphatic differences in 

 the songs of the Spotted Towhees, and he soon comes to believe that 

 these are locally constant, that there is in each locality a definite prevail- 

 ing type, or cadence, of song, and that this is significant for geographical 

 variation within the species. 



Now the existence of races — that is, of geographical variations, as 

 indicated by constant differences in shade of plumage, extent of white 

 spotting, size of feet, etc. — is so well known within this species, that one 

 has to apologize for ignoring its distinctions in a popular treatment. 

 Suffice to say, by way of such apology, that these distinctions have been 

 enormously over-stressed, and that no layman with an hour's instruction 

 could hope to tell whether a given specimen of one of California's five 

 races came from San Diego, Alturas, or Humboldt County (indeed the 

 experts are still scrapping about it). But distinctions of song, in no 

 wise correlated, apparently, with those of hue or claw-length, do exist, 

 and it is a fascinating exercise for the travelled student to distinguish 

 them. Thus, northern birds say, wheeeee or tsweee, in the dullest imagin- 



395 



