The Crissal Thrasher 
immaculate. Av. of 56 eggs in M. C. 0 . coll.: 26.4x19.1 (1.04 x .75); index 72; range 
23.6-29.2 by 17.5-20.1 (.93-1.15 by .69-.79). Season: Feb. 15-June; two broods. 
General Range. —The deserts of southwestern United States and northern 
Mexico. Breeds from Sonora and Chihuahua north to southern Nevada and Utah, 
and from the Colorado Desert east to western Texas. 
Distribution in California. —Resident in the mesquite association in the bed 
of the Colorado Desert west to Palm Springs, and in the Colorado River Valley north 
at least to Needles. 
Authorities.—Baird (Harporhynchus crissalis), Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv., vol. ix., 
1858, p. 923 (Fort Yuma); Mearns, Auk, vol. iii., 1886, p. 292 (syn., hist., biog., etc.); 
Morcom, Bull. Ridgway Orn. Club, no. 2, 1887, p. 54 (Yuma, breeding); Gilman , 
Condor, vol. iv., 1902, p. 15 (Colorado Desert; desc. nests, etc.); Grinnell, Univ. Calif. 
Pub. Zook, vol. xii., 1914, p. 207 (Colorado Valley; habitat, etc.). 
OXE WOULD SL T PPOSE that the extreme of modesty had been 
reached in the case of the Leconte Thrasher. Perhaps it has, so far as 
disposition is concerned, but the scantily clad desert sometimes betrays 
its votaries into involuntary exposure. The Crissal Thrasher has both 
disposition and opportunity, for he courts the seclusion of the mesquite 
forests, or of the Atriplex beds which border the desert sink, so that in 
the agelong effort to evade the public eye, the Crissal is more completely 
successful. Full many a nest have we found buried in the thorny heart 
of a jujube bush, but what we do not know about the Crissal Thrasher 
itself would fill a volume. 
Somewhere in the forest depths one may hear the Crissal Thrasher 
singing. The tracing of it, however, will be a laborious task; because if 
the bird even suspects human approach, it will cease upon the instant and 
dive for cover. The song is rather a mild version of that of the Western 
Mockingbird. It is largely a mocking song, but is softened, subdued, 
refined, and has little of the dash or distinction of either the Mocker or 
the California Thrasher. 
A little can be learned of the bird’s behavior, if one posts himself 
beside the nest. This, although it occupies the heart of a thorn-bush, 
or else has been clustered amid supporting thorn twigs on the under 
side of a protecting mesquite limb, will have been uncovered so adroitly 
by the sitting bird that no movement of hers has been discovered. By 
and by, however, a solicitous note, picliddry, pitchoory, or pitchree', will 
sound from the brush some twenty yards away. One very earnest 
fowl, near Tucson, remarked, Pichdori karrik', pichodri karrik' in quite 
a brisk manner. At this sound birds of other species swarm up to the 
seat of trouble; but the mistress and her still more backward mate lurk 
ever in the offing. On such occasions I have seen a Palmer Thrasher, 
T. curvirostre palmeri, march boldly up to the nesting bush of crissalis 
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