The Lucy Warbler 



cheeks, lores, and a short superciliary, white. Bill and feet dark horn-color. Adult 

 male in fall and winter: Like male in spring, but upperparts overcast with brownish, 

 and underparts, save on belly, overcast with brownish buff; the chestnut of crown- 

 patch nearly concealed by broad tips of brownish gray feathers. Adult female: Like 

 male but chestnut of crown reduced in area, and more or less concealed by gray tips 

 of feathers. Young, first plumage: Like adults, but of a clearer white below,; chest- 

 nut of crown lacking, that of upper tail-coverts changed to buffy ochraceous, middle 

 and greater wing-coverts tipped with buffy, forming two noticeable bars. Av. of 10 

 males in M. V. Z. colls: Length (skins) 103.4 (4.07) ; wing 56.6 (2.23); tail 41.8 (1.646); 

 bill 8.5 (.33); tarsus 16. 1 (.63). Females a little smaller. 



Recognition Marks. — Smallest warbler size; gray coloration with chestnut 

 patches distinctive. 



Nesting. — Nest: An unpretentious cup of fine grass, lined or not with horse- 

 hair, or, more rarely, with cowhair; placed at moderate heights in crevices or holes, 

 or behind bark-scale of mesquite trees. Eggs: 4 or 5, 6 of record; white, sharply 

 and sparingly speckled, chiefly about the larger end, or else wreathed with chestnut 

 and violet-gray. Av. size 15.24 x 12.2 (.60 x .48). Season: Colorado River, April; 

 Tucson, May; one brood. 



General Range. — Southwestern United States and Mexico. Breeds in Lower 

 Sonoran zone in southeastern California, extreme southwestern Utah, and Arizona; 

 winters in western Mexico south to Jalisco. 



Range in California. — Breeds in the mesquite belt of the Colorado River, 

 and occurs sparingly upon the Colorado Desert: Chemehuevis Valley, March 10, 

 1910, by Joseph Grinnell; Mecca, March 29, 1911, by A. van Rossem. 



Authorities. — van Rossem, Condor, vol. xiii., 191 1, p. 137 (Mecca); Brewster, 

 Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, vol. vii., 1882, p. 82 (Ariz.; habits, desc. young, nest and eggs, 

 etc.); Gilnian, Condor, vol. xi., 1909, p. 166 (Ariz.; nesting habits); Grinnell, Univ,, 

 Calif. Pub. Zool., vol. xii., 1914, p. 191 (Colo. Valley). 



IT IS NOT surprising that some of the ornithological fathers should 

 have overlooked this elusive and obscurely colored species. The bird, 

 nevertheless, abounds in those sharply limited areas of California which 

 support mesquite trees (Prosopis juliflora glandulosa) of a sufficient size. 

 Our own Dr. Cooper discovered and described the species from a bird 

 taken at Fort Mojave in the spring of 1861 ; and as he described it he made 

 graceful dedication forthwith to Miss Lucy Baird, whose father, Spencer 

 F. Baird, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had shown such 

 conspicuous interest in western ornithology. But Fort Mojave was on 

 the Arizona side of the Colorado River. This left the occurrence of the 

 species in California in a presumptive state; and its status was never 

 fully established until Grinnell, 1 reporting in 1914 upon the expedition 

 sent out by the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in 1910, declared it to 

 be of common occurrence, and breeding along the California side of the 

 Colorado River. Yet to a more recent observer, Mr. Adriaan van 



'"An Account of the Mammals and Birds of the Lower Colorado Valley," by Joseph Grinnell, p. 191 fg. Pub- 

 lished March 20, 1914. 



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