Mar., 1921 FROM FIELD AND STUDY 67 
permitted, but there have been many and often long-continued interruptions caused by 
field trips and various other matters demanding attention. However, hundreds of Red- 
wings have been examined and measured in various ways, and all these measurements 
have been carefully tabulated. Ratios of certain parts to others have been worked out 
‘in the endeavor to find some system that might assist us to describe or to determine the 
different subspecies with greater ease, especially in the winter nlumages. The results of 
all this work have been far from satisfactory, from my own point of view. 
Unfortunately the conclusion has been forced upon me that this undertaking must 
be abandoned, at any rate for the time being, for the reason that there is so much other 
work that must no longer be delayed, and which will occupy the greater portion of my 
time for months to come, with new matters constantly arising to take up what little 
time there might otherwise be to spare. Hence it seems to me that the only thing to do 
is to accept the situation gracefully and to leave the field clear to any ambitious mortal 
who may allow himself to be drawn into this alluring but treacherous current. 
There is one point, however, that I would like to touch upon in this short paper 
before dropping the subject. This is that the Bi-colored Blackbird, Agelaius gubernaior 
californicus Nelson, or A. phoeniceus californicus as I believe it should be (J. Mailliard, 
Condor, x11, 1910, p. 66), was described from an intermediate bird. The type specimen is 
a female, from Stockton, San Joaquin County, California, with the wing of a male tied 
to it (Agelaius phoeniceus B. gubernator [Ridgway] Belding). Now it has been shown 
(J. Mailliard, loc. cit.) that the Red-wing inhabiting the country at the junction of the 
Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers, about forty miles south of Stockton, approaches the 
San Diego Red-wing (Agelaius phoeniceus neutralis); yet the bird found near Stockton 
in a similar type of country, with no climatic or topographical barrier between it and 
the Tuolumne junction country, comes a great deal closer to the form inhabiting the 
region about San Francisco Bay whose habitat extends, apparently, as far south as Mon- 
terey Bay along the coast, up the coast through Marin and Sonoma counties, and along 
the inner coast range as far north, at least, as Snow Mountain, Colusa County. The 
Stockton bird has enough of the characteristics of neutralis to be appreciably different: 
it shows itself to be more or less intermediate, having a heavier bill than the Bay region 
birds, less black on the middle wing coverts of the males and, on an average, heavier 
streaking upon the heads and under parts of the females. It is very unfortunate that the 
latter was not taken as the type of californicus, in which case it night be possible to sep- 
arate out the Tuolumne River race, although this latter seems to be rather variable, as 
I have taken specimens which were practically identical with others from Stockton. In 
fact, the Tuolumne River bird appears to be just about midway between the zeutralis of 
southern California and the San Francisco Bay Red-wing. 
A singular angle in the distribution of these races is that while the intermediate 
approaching neutralis appears to be the one occupying the greater part of the San Joa- 
quin Valley in south-central California, at the extreme southern end of this valley there 
is an irruption of what is practically californicus. Breeding birds from Buena Vista 
Lake, Kern County, are not easily distinguishable, if at all, from those breeding at Stock- 
ton, while birds from Tejon Pass, a little farther south, are also nearer to these than 
to neutralis, which occurs only a little farther south still. It looks as if this southern 
interpolation of californicus must have reached that territory via the valley of the Sali- 
uas River and San Juan Creek through the Carriso and Elkhorn plains, from which there 
are one or two low passes into the San Joaquin Valley. 
In taking measurements of Red-wings I have tried to find some way of expressing 
in more definite terms the differences in the shape of bills, such as thickness for exam- 
ple. by taking the distance from the nostril to end of bill (placing the posterior leg of 
dividers or calipers, which must be finely pointed for such work, in the actual opening 
of the nostril to ensure always starting from the same point), then dividing this by two 
and measuring the width of bill exactly midway between the two points. While this is 
a very delicate measurement to get exactly, in conjunction with width at base and length 
of bill it gives a better idea of the slenderness or thickness of the bill than anything 
else I have tried out. Its chief fault lies in the fact that it is so small a dimension that 
one or two tenths of a millimeter mean a good deal, and the slight inaccuracies one is 
liable to fall into while making a measurement so difficult to get exact, are magnified 
in importance. 
