Sept, 1915 LATE NESTING RECORD FOR CALIFORNIA WOODPECKER 185 
where they pounded away for some minutes before coming to the nest with t heir 
bills stuffed full of the white bits. From this time until the young left the nest 
they were fed mostly on these acorns. 
Sometimes the birds flew to an oak tree from which they took the green 
acorns. These were brought to the poles and, I believe, stored away in the holes 
left vacant by the taking of the old acorns. However I have no proof that green 
nuts were not fed. It only seemed as if the birds were taking the green ones to 
the poles rather than directly to the young, and since the dried ones would be 
easier cracked, it is reasonable to believe they were the ones the birds favored for 
food purposes. Perhaps green acorns are as indigestible for baby birds as green 
apples are for baby boys. Who knows ! 
On the twentieth of the month I was extremely interested to see the male 
eating black scale from a pepper-tree that grew about a block from the nest. 
At this time one large young was reaching far out of the hole and I was 
told by a neighbor that two of the nestlings w r ere found at the foot of the pole. 
While it seemed hardly credible that two of them should have been pushed out, 
there proved to be only one that left the nest, which was either late on the 25th, 
or early on the 26th of September, fourteen or fifteen days after I discovered 
them. 
About six o’clock of the 26th I found the young bird flying, in rather an 
uncertain way, from pole to pole, where lie hopped about and took food which 
the adults brought him. There were two or three white bars on the black outer 
tail-feathers, and a patch below the red crown was gray. 
It would seem that this late nesting of the California Woodpecker is not so 
unusual as we may have believed; for on the 19th of October I found another 
pole, two blocks farther down this busy thoroughfare, where; noisy young were 
being fed. One was leaning well out of the nest. As in the other ease, nuts were 
being fed; but once I saw one of the adults fly down through the air nearly to 
the ground and come back with a large, long-legged insect in its bill, proving that 
the diet was not exclusively of acorns. 
Los Angeles, California, April 6, 1915. 
DESCRIPTION OF A NEW RACE OF SAVANNAH SPARROW 
AND SUGGESTIONS ON SOME CALIFORNIA BIRDS 
By LOUIS B. BISHOP, M. D. 
I N STUDYING a collection, one sometimes finds birds that show an extension 
of range, or seem worth reporting from a paucity of records of their pres- 
ence in the place where these were taken, revises his previous opinion in the 
light of more material, or reaches conclusions in harmony with, or in opposition 
to, others who have studied the same species. These are my excuses for this paper. 
For assistance my thanks are due to Dr. Dwight, Mr. Oberholser and Mr. Porter. 
Most of the birds recorded were collected for me by the late Mr. Marsden. 
Fratercula corniculata. The Horned Puffin recorded in the obituary of 
Mr. Marsden as collected at Pacific Grove on February 17, 1914, was a female 
in winter plumage including the bill. It is now no. 26172 of my collection. 
Larus kumlieni (?). A young female gull (no. 23689), collected at Pacific 
Grove on January 4, 1912, by Mr. Marsden, has been compared very carefully 
more than once by Dr. Dwight and myself with the gulls in the collection of the 
