Mar., 1912 
A WEEK AFIELD IX vSOUTIlERX ARIZONA 
walked along under some tall cottonwoods we flushed a flock of Turkey Ihizzards 
{Cafhartcs aura scptcutrionalis) which made them their roosting place. There 
were close to a hundred of them, and the air was black with their broad wings as 
they swung round and round over the tops of the trees. 
We reached the machine just at dusk and after a hasty supper, loaded our 
baggage and started on the last ten miles of our trip, arriving in Tomb.stone at 
nine o’clock. 
Our speedometer registered three hundred and seventy-five miles for the trip. 
While not up to my expectations as a collecting' trip, it had been successful enough 
to be satisfactory, with variety enough to make it thoroughly enjoyable. 
PASSERELLA STEPHEN SI IN MARIN COUNTY, CALIh'ORNlA 
By JOSEPH MAILLIARD 
WITH THREE PHOTOS 
U NTIL recently there has been no sufficiently large series of Passerclla got- 
ten together in California to permit of intelligent comparison of the var- 
ious individuals a collector might obtain. This lack of material for com- 
parison has left him in the dark as to subspecific determinations. But 
now, under the care of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, L^niversity of Cali- 
fornia, at Berkeley, there is a fine working series consisting of specimens belong- 
ing to the museum it.self, and to the Grinnell, Swarth and Morcom collections. 
These contain specimens of Passerclla taken in many places on the Pacific Coa.st, 
from Southern California to as far north as Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, many of 
them — notably the northern forms and P. stcphensi — having been taken on their 
breeding grounds either actually during the breeding sea.son or before the young 
were old enough to migrate. 
Realizing this to be our opportunity, it seemed time for us to undertake the 
difficult task of identifying the various individuals of this group in our own col- 
lection (collection of J. & J. W. Mailliard, San F'rancisco ) , the majority of which 
were migrants or winter residents. Mr. Joseph Grinnell of the Museum of Ver- 
tebrate Zoology gave us most generous assi.stance in this work, and as he had 
personally collected many breeding specimens his assistance was especially valu- 
able. 
It happens that in very cold winters on the Rancho San Geronimo, Marin 
County, California, we have sometimes found, in a sort of rocky mesa covered 
with dwarfed cypress, ceanothus and low, scrubby manzanita bushes, on the top of 
the range, a form of Passerclla that differed from the commonly found winter 
forms in having a very heavy bill and being of a much lighter and more grayish 
coloration. C. A. Allen of San Geronimo (postoffice formerly known as Nicasio) 
took quite a few' of these in times past and sold them to eastern collectors as 
P. i. megarJiyncha — Thick-billed Sparrow — and as far as we know^ they have 
always been so accepted. In fact this form is mentioned by the writer in “Land 
Birds of Marin County, Cal.” (Condor, ii, May, 1900, p. 62), under incgarhyncha 
as “casual visitant,” with no comment since, and is now' in the Third Edition of 
the A. O. U. Check-List of North American Birds as such. There should be 
