316 FINCHES, SPARROWS, ETC, 
Female : length (skins) 5.60-6.50, wing 3.80-4.19, tail 2.39-2.78, bill .43- 
.56. 
Distribution. — Interior of British America; wintering in the Rocky 
Mountain region of the United States, most abundantly on the eastern 
slope, and extending to western Nebraska. Recorded as breeding in the 
Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains in California. 
Food. — Ants, small beetles, and other insects, pine seeds and plant 
seeds. 
The leucostictes are birds of the mountain snow-banks and glaciers. 
They feed on seeds and insects blown to the heights and left to be 
picked up about the border of the melting snow. They are often 
found at an altitude of from 11,000 to 12,000 feet, and under the 
crest of Mt. Whitney, at about 15,000 feet, Mr. Frank Daggett 
found a pair picking Up insects from a snow-drift. When a hail¬ 
storm passed over the peak the birds took refuge under granite 
slabs, but as soon as it was over they were back on the snow. 
At Fort Keough, Montana, Capt. Thorne reports that the leuco¬ 
stictes come in November and stay in varying numbers till the last 
of March, picking up grain in the corrals and often taking shelter in 
old cliff swallow nests. When it is cold and stormy, he says, they 
gather in the post by thousands, but when a warm day comes they 
scatter out again. 
Along the crests of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains and 
the higher peaks of the Cascade range, the first September snow¬ 
storms bring flocks of the rosy finches, scurrying with the driving 
snow, or, on clear days, basking in the sunshine about the old snow¬ 
banks and ice-fields. 
While I was running a line of traps along the slope above Mono 
Pass in the Sierra Nevada one morning early in September, with my 
eyes half shut to keep out a fine driving snow, a little flock of nine 
rosy finches dropped down near me and began getting their breakfast 
from a last year’s snow-bank, hopping about and picking rapidly 
here and there over the rough surface, fluffing their feathers and 
facing the cutting wind to keep from being blown away, all the 
time talking in cheery little notes among themselves. Now and 
then one would snuggle up in the lee of a chunk of ice or a stone, 
fluff his feathers, and hold up his feet to warm his toes just as the 
snowbirds do in winter, then hop out again and pick up more chilled 
bugs from the surface of the snow, looking up at me with a frank 
trustfulness that had surely never been betrayed. 
Vernon Bailey. 
524a. I*, t. littoralis (Baird). Hepburn Leucosticte. 
Similar to the gray-crowned, but gray of crown spreading down over 
sides of head, sometimes covering all but black frontal patch. Male .-length 
(skins) 6.04-6.80, wing 4.00-4.32, tail 2.36-2.75, bill .43-49. Female: 
length (skins) 6.08-6.47, wing 3.94-4.10, bill .45-.49. 
