May. 1903 I 
THE CONDOR 
71 
ing away. I examined the place, but found nothing to account for their presence. 
At the Natural Bridge near Fort Verde, I saw several nests of this bird in 
1893, some of which were old, but several new and containing young. One or two 
were in cups in the rock of the bridge; the others in giant sycamores; that grew in 
the narrow canyon. The old Scotchman, Dave Gowan, who owns the bridge, 
called them “Black Faulcons,” and said they had nested there for years. They 
are much more common in this section, than in the southeast corner of the 
territory. 
The California Yellow Warbler. 
BY JOSEPH GRINNEI.r.. 
T he object of the present paper is to recall attention to the California race of 
the yellow warbler with a view to its being generally recognized in nomen- 
clature. The fact that skins from certain western localities exhibit peculiar- 
ities in size and color is not by any means a new one. That keenest of last-century 
systematists, Baird, in 1858 noted that “specimens from the Pacific coast appear 
rather smaller, with less conspicuous streaks than eastern, but no other differences 
are appreciable.” Nearly thirty years later, in 1887, Coale worked over the yel- 
low warblers of North America, with the result that ‘‘the western race” was given 
the name Dendroica csstiva tnorcomi, typeship being conferred on a skin from 
Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Shortly after, Ridgwaj^ included a de.scription of the 
subspecies in regular standing in his Manual, where it remained in the last edition. 
In 1899 the A. O. U. Committee rejected the race, and it has not since been recon- 
sidered. In spite of the A. O. U. Committee’s ruling a few independently observ- 
ant students have since then ventured to recognize the ‘‘Western Yellow Warbler,” 
using Coale’s name. Ridgway has recently changed his opinion as to the value of 
the characters assigned in his Manual. For in Part II of his Birds of North and 
Middle America, he writes in a foot-note: “I am not able to make out satisfactor- 
ily a western form {D. ce. tnorcomi Coale). Western specimens seem, as a rule, to 
have shorter wings and longer tails than eastern examples, and adult males are 
often much less heavily streaked beneath; but the differences appear much too in- 
constant to justify recognition of a western subspecies.” Finally Brewster, in his 
Birds of the Cape Region of Lower California, makes the following well-considered 
observations: ‘‘The remaining six birds [from the Cape Region] apparently be- 
long to the form which breeds in California, and which, although usually called 
cestiva, has been referred by a few writers to morcomi. It differs rather constantly 
from (Estiva of eastern North America in having the chestnut streaks on the under 
parts narrower and fainter in this respect, showing an approach to sonorana, from 
which, however, it may be readily distinguished by the decidedly darker, greener 
coloring of its upper parts. The female is similar to (Estiva (although less often 
streaked beneath) and hence quite different from that of sonorana, which is gray- 
ish above and clay-colored beneath, with but faint traces of yellowish on the body 
plumage. On the whole the yellow warbler of California seems to me too nearly 
like true (estiva to be recognized as a distinct subspecies. In any case it should 
not be called morcooti. At least Mr. Ridgway and I agree in considering the type 
of that supposed form merely an exceptionally faintly streaked specimen of (Estiva, 
of which, moreover, the National Museum possesses a number of perfectly typical 
