134 Vol. XXIV 
FROM FIELD AND STUDY 
The Arizona Crested Flycatcher as a Bird of California——On May 17, 1921, Mrs. 
May Canfield collected two Arizona Crested Flycatchers (Myiarchus magister magister ) 
in the bottomlands of the Colorado River, near Bard, Imperial County, California. These 
specimens which are now numbered J 1071 and J 1072 in my collection, are of particular 
interest, since they constitute the first record of the appearance and capture of this spe- 
cies in California. 
In connection with this record, it is of interest to note that the birds were col- 
lected in an indigenous willow-cottonwood association bordering cultivated fields. Too 
much stress must not be placed, however, upon the difference between this environment 
and the giant cactus association in which Mr. H. S. Swarth (Pacific Coast Avifauna, 
no. 10, 1914, pp. 40-41) found these birds nesting in southeastern Arizona, and to which 
he considered the species restricted, at least in that section. The date of the present 
capture is a dangerous one to conjure with when the breeding or migrational status of 
a species is in question. There are isolated groves of this same sahuaro cactus (Cereus 
giganteus) only a few miles distant from our California record station. In the migra- 
tion of many species, the males precede the females. The collection of two males, instead 
of a mated pair, may therefore well suggest the probability that these birds were simply 
on the move to nesting sites in the sahuaros, a bit farther to the north. 
From Mr. Swarth’s experience, and from our own, it is perhaps permissible to 
predict that the range of this species will ultimately prove to be delimited in California 
by the northern and western outposts of this cactus within our borders. The foothold of 
the sahuaro in California is admittedly precarious. If the summer range of magister 
should be found to be coincident with the distribution of this cactus, and if the latter 
should be extirpated by the agency of man, or otherwise, it would be interesting to note, 
as the years go by, whether the flycatcher in question has sufficient associational plas- 
ticity to adapt itself to the changed ecological condition, or whether it would retreat, in 
that event, to the sahuaros of Arizona.—DonaLp R. Dickry, Pasadena, California, April 
-28, 1922. 
Occurrence of the Surf Scoter on Fresh Water.—A neighbor shot five Surf Scoters 
(Oidemia perspicillata) April 5, 1922, on a small pond at the head of his irrigating ditch 
at the lower end of La Puerta Valley, San Diego County, California; altitude 2100 feet. 
One was a male, the other four females. The male was given me and I preserved the 
Skin (now no. 43202, Mus. Vert. Zool.). I think this is the first fresh-water record for 
this species for California—Frank STEPHENS, San Diego, California, April 10, 1922. 
The Salt Marsh Yellowthroat in Southern California—Some months ago, when 
Mr. Donald R. Dickey and the writer had occasion to work over a series of Yellow- 
throats (Geothlypis trichas) taken in the salt marsh area about Anaheim Bay, Orange 
County, California, it was found that two forms were present. Most of the birds were 
readily referable to the fresh water resident, scirpicola, but nine dark, small specimens 
seemed to belong to the San Francisco Bay race, sinuosa. Three of the latter were sent 
to Mr. H. S. Swarth, of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, who pronounced them repre- 
sentative of that form. He also suggested that breeding yellowthroats from the southern 
California salt marshes be collected in order to determine their exact status. 
Accordingly, on April 21, 1922, I took, at Hog Island, Anaheim Bay, Orange County, 
three males in breeding condition, and a female carrying nesting material. These are 
found to be not quite typical of, but may be safely called, scirpicola. The extreme dates 
for the occurrence of sinuosa in this region are October 3 to March 15, so that it evidently 
occurs as a spring and fall migrant as wellasa winter visitant. Under the circumstances, 
the appearance of sinuosa in the salt marshes of southern California indicates that this 
form is, to a degree at least, migratory, and not the hard and fast “resident” of the San 
Francisco Bay region, which it was previously supposed to be.—A. J. van Rossem, Los 
Angeles, California, May 23, 1922, 
