The Beautiful Bunting 



No. 71 



Beautiful Bunting 



A. O. U. No. 6ooc. Passerina versicolor pulchra Ridgway. 



Synonyms. — Varied Bunting. Western Varied Bunting. 



Description (of versicolor, after Ridgway). — Adult male in summer: Lores and 

 frontlet black; chin blackish; forehead, forecrown, supra-auriculars, lower hind-neck, 

 rump, and upper tail-coverts light purplish blue (mauve to campanula blue or flax 

 flower blue); the malar and auricular regions and lesser wing-coverts similar but 

 darker; hind-crown, occiput, and cervix, with a touch on either eyelid, vermilion red; 

 back dusky purplish red, the scapulars more bluish or purplish; throat and chest 

 maroon purplish, clearing, redder, on throat; remaining underparts dusky purple, 

 becoming grayer on flanks; wings dusky with grayish blue and purplish edgings; tail 

 blackish edged with dull blue. Bill black above, lighter, horn-color, below; feet and 

 tarsi brownish black. Adult male in winter: Bright colors more or less obscured by 

 grayish brown tips of feathers. Adult female in summer: "Above grayish brown 

 (hair-brown), more or less strongly tinged with olive (occasionally tinged with dull 

 light grayish blue), passing into light glaucous or bluish gray on rump and upper tail- 

 coverts; tail bluish dusky, the rectrices edged with glaucous-bluish; middle and greater 

 wing-coverts indistinctly tipped with paler grayish brown, and primaries and ad- 

 joining secondaries edged with pale glaucous gray or bluish; underparts dull whitish 

 on throat, abdomen, and tips of under tail-coverts; elsewhere pale grayish brown, 

 deepest on chest." Length (skins of adult male): 127 (5.00); wing 67 (2.64); tail 

 53.3 (2.10); bill 10.2 (.40); tarsus 17.8 (.70). Females slightly smaller. 



Recognition Marks. — Warbler size; variegated plumage with contrasting blues 

 and red distinctive for male; female much more difficult, — a grayish brown and bluish 

 gray bird. 



Remarks. — Ridgway, in his Birds of N. and M. America, Part I, 1901, p. 592, 

 abandons the claim of a western subspecies, pulchra, which he had advanced in 1887 

 (Manual of N. A. Birds, p. 448), after commenting on the minor differences shown by 

 specimens from Lower California, and the intermediate character of specimens from 

 western Mexico. We shall either have to follow him or else define the intermediate 

 form, which is evidently that of Arizona also. 



Nesting. — Not known to breed in California. Nest and eggs much as in pre- 

 ceding species. 



Range of Passerina versicolor. — Southern border of the United States and Mexico. 



Range of P. v. pulchra. — The alleged western form found in "southern Arizona", 

 northwestern Mexico, and discontinuously (?) in southern Lower California. 



Occurrence in California. — One occurrence, as below, at Blythe, February, 

 1914. 



Authorities. — Daggett, Condor, vol. xvi., 1914, p. 260 (Blythe, on the Colorado 

 R.); Grayson, Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. ii., 1874, p. 276 (habits, song, etc.). 



THE BEALITIFLiL Bunting is a Mexican species which upon two 

 occasions has been caught trespassing in the States. On July 14, 1884, 

 Mr. Frank Stephens took a specimen, an adult female, at Crittenden, near 



412 



