July, 1919 FROM FIELD AND STUDY 173 
five years of beach work. Other collectors state they have never seen it in this locality; 
hence the record seems worthy of publication. 
Little Brown Crane (Grus canadensis): A specimen shot at dusk on January 31, 
1918, near Los Angeles, by a hunter who mistook it for a goose, was presented to this 
Museum, where it was mounted and placed on exhibition. 
Marbled Godwit (Limosa fedoa): A winter record, January 6, 1919, appears unique. 
The bird was seen from a car window, near Del Rey; but no mistake could have been 
made in identification. 
A cripples’ convention: While bird-looking on the beach January 1, 1919, near 
Hermosa Beach, I noted a flock of Sanderling (Calidris leucophaea) that acted peculi- 
arly. By working carefully along at some distance from the water, the birds were in- 
duced to string out in a line near the water’s edge and passed me in that formation, eight 
of them running and fourteen hopping, and close inspection with a glass showed that 
fourteen of that flock were one-legged: Less than 200 feet farther up the beach were six 
Knots (Tringa canutus) (note the winter record) of which two were “hoppers”; while 
close beside them, farther from the water, was a flock of seventeen Snowy Plover (Aegi- 
alitis nivosa) of which not less than five were one-legged. It would seem natural that 
birds of one species, crippled and unable to compete on even terms with their normal fel- 
lows, should flock together to some extent; but such a percentage of cripples, of three 
species, and the proximity of the different groups of cripples, is interesting, to say the 
least.—L. E. Wyman, Museum of History, Science and Art, Los Angeles, June 14, 1919. 
The MacFarlane Screech Owl in California—Through an oversight there was 
omitted from the 1915 California state list of birds a race of screech owl fully entitled to 
have been included. This was the MacFarlane Screech Owl, Otus asio macfarlanei 
(Brewster), the claims to which as a bird of California were clearly set forth by Mr. Rob- 
ert Ridgway in 1914 (Birds of North and Middle America, Part vi, pp. 697-698). He 
gives the range of this owl as including “northeastern California (Fort Crook; Baird, 
Shasta County?)”. The evidence for its occurrence at Baird remains questionable, but 
for Fort Crook, which is near Burgettville in extreme northeastern Shasta County, there 
is a specimen in the United States National Museum. 
Through the kind offices of Dr. Chas. W. Richmond, Associate Curator of Birds in 
the National Museum, the undersigned has been privileged to examine this Fort Crook 
specimen. It is no. 16027, U. S. Nat. Mus., male, taken by John Feilner (probably in 
1860), and is in apparently as good state of preservation as if it were taken last year in- 
stead of nearly sixty years ago. The present writer has made comparisons between this 
bird and macfarlanei from eastern Washington, without detecting differences of any 
seeming consequence. Larger size, greater extent of blackish markings on the contour 
feathers generally, and the browner tone of color dorsally, serve to distinguish it from 
any specimen of the more southern California races, bendirei, quercinus and gilmani. 
The Fort Crook bird, having been in existence so long, has been commented upon 
by a number of writers before Ridgway announced its status in positive terms. Brew- 
ster (Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, vir, 1882, p. 82) considered it an intergrade between bendirei 
and kennicotti; Townsend (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., x, 1887, p. 203) placed it under the 
name “kennicottii?”; Brewster (Awk, vit, 1891, p. 143) thought it “about intermediate” 
between bendirei and macfarlanei; and Hasbrouck (Awk, x, 1893, p. 256) put it under 
bendiret. 
Collectors visiting the Modoc region of extreme northeastern California should 
keep special lookout for the Macfarlane Screech Owl. It ought to be common there local- 
ly, even though but one California-taken specimen seems as yet to be contained in any 
museum.—J. GRINNELL, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, California, April 1s, 
1919. 
A Breeding Record for the Red-headed Woodpecker in New Mexico.—On Monday, 
June 16, while making a trip about five miles south of Albuquerque in company with S. 
E. Piper and J. S. Ligon, of the U. S. Biological Survey, we saw a Red-headed Woodpeck- 
er (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) enter a hole in a dead cottonwood tree. An examina- 
tion showed the hole to contain young birds, probably about ten days old. Both adults 
were observed a few minutes later carrying food to the young, and on passing the same 
place about dark one of the old birds was found on the nest. As nearly as I am aware 
