12 



NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 65 



State of Mexico, and they were collected in Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero, 

 Morelos, Jalisco, Michoacan, Nayarit, and Aguascalientes during this 

 study. 



This race was breeding in Oaxaca and Puebla during the first 

 week in February, although the altitudes were from 4,000 to 7,000 

 feet. Also, they were breeding in the mountains of Guerrero and 

 Nayarit in March when mearnsi, still heavy with winter fat, were 

 in flocks there in the foothills, and on the coastal plain of these States. 



Most moiiticola are believed to winter in or near their breeding 

 range. Some at tlie northern end of the range move south for the 

 winter for an undetermined distance, but there are winter flocks as 

 far north as Coahuila and Durango. No specimens of monticola are 

 known to have been collected from coastal areas or any locality south 

 of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. 



Several individuals of asiatica banded in Texas and Tamaulipas, 

 Mexico, and recovered in the Mexican highlands, chiefly in the States 

 of Morelos and Oaxaca, prove that some asiatica migrate through or 

 winter in the range of monticola. Other winter specimens of asiatica 

 have been collected in these southern highlands. Recoveries in the 

 western highlands, and especially in the States of Michoacan and 

 Jalisco, of many Arizona-banded mearnsi prove that many of this sub- 

 species winter there with the resident monticola. If most of the 

 museum specimens of white-winged do^ es were obtained in winter, it 

 is not surprising that mearnsi was for so long thought to be the resi- 

 dent subspecies throughout the ^vestem highlands. 



Peters (1937, p. 87), as well as Hellmayr and Conover (1942, p. 

 500) , ga^'e the range of mearnsi as extending southward and eastward 

 in Mexico to Puebla. The present study shows that much of this 

 area is within the range of the new race monticola. Specimens from 

 the southern highlands of Mexico in Guerrero, D. F., Morelos, and 

 San Luis Potosi, considered by Pitelka (1948) to be intermediate 

 between asiatica and mearnsi, included some wintering mearnsi and 

 asiatica, as well as summer and autumn monticola. 



Several specimens taken in winter in Oaxaca and Puebla were un- 

 usually large, and may represent a different race that breeds in the 

 higher mountains of those States and winters at louver elevations with 

 monticola, or they may be grandis which wintered south of the prin- 

 cipal range. The inclusion of their measurements ^vith those of 

 monticola is responsible for the upper limits of the wing and tail 

 measurements of monticola exceeding those of grandis. Further field 

 study of breeding populations in different parts of Oaxaca and Puebla 

 is needed to give information on this subject. 



Another interesting discovery concerns a population in the moun- 

 tainous part of Durango, where dimensions of the sexes are about 

 equal. The several females were sexed and labeled in different years 



