182 ‘THE CONDOR + Vol. XXIII 
This migratory wavelet was noted on the morning of October 4, just before 
sunrise. As I reached the extremity of the brush-land where, around a sharp 
spur, the woods commenced again on the north side, I ran into this small band 
of new arrivals, perhaps a dozen or so. As expressed in my notes taken at 
the time these birds ‘‘ecame out of the brush like flying fish out of a wave’’ 
and dove in again a little farther on, but whether they came up out of the 
woods on the north, or had flown clear across the deep canyon over the tops 
ot the trees from Mt. Cobb, I had no way of judging as I was a few seconds 
too late to see just in what manner they had landed on this spur. After a 
while we went down to the places which we had cleared around the water 
holes and soon noted birds that appeared to be new arrivals, as they were 
very thirsty. 
It would seem from these observations that the fox sparrows travel ex- 
tensively in the night and early morning. The wave of 1919 was much larger 
than anything we saw in 1920, and the birds seen in that case had evidently 
camped down for the day, the intense heat of which induced them to seek 
water, thus creating the activity which we observed. 
As before remarked, almost all the birds first taken at Castle Hot Springs 
were the Yolla Bolly Fox Sparrow; but by September 28 the ratio commenced 
to change and toward the last of our stay the proportion was very small, the 
average being about 38 per cent for the whole period of observation. 
Of the other subspecies taken, practically all belonged to the Unalasch- 
censis group, but they seemed to run rather darker than those of the previous 
year. Many of these I have placed with the Yakutat and Sooty forms (P. 1. 
annecicns and fuliginosa) ; but few, however, are typical, and there are many 
individuals which neither Mr. H. S. Swarth—who is our best authority on fox 
sparrows today-—nor I can satisfactorily place, this being true of many of 
those taken in the fall of 1919 as well. 
These undetermined individuals appear to belong somewhere between the 
Valdez and Sooty Fox Sparrows as before remarked, although none ap- 
proached the more reddish race, townsendi; but as a whole they are so nearly 
homogeneous that it seems as if there might be some locality to the north of 
us, unexplored as far as fox sparrows are concerned, which may prove to be 
the breeding ground of a more or less distinet race, and from which these at 
present undetermined birds come. Meanwhile these particular specimens lie 
in our cases with the label marked ‘‘subsp.?’’ There is a good deal yet to be 
learned about our speckle-breasted friends, the fox sparrows. 
San Francisco, September 8, 1921. 
