ORNITHOLOGIST 
— A ND — 
OOLOGIST. 
$1.00 per 
Joseph M. Wade, Editor and Publisher. 
Single Copy, 
Annum. 
Established, March, 1875. 
10 Cents. 
VOL. VII. 
NORWICH, CONN., MAY 15, 1882. 
NO. 16. 
The Rufous-winged Sparrow. 
CAPT. CHAS. E. BENDIRE, U. S. A. 
This little sparrow, first described in the 
American Naturalist in 1873, Page 322, 
by Dr. Cones as Peucoea carpalis, is a 
common resident in the vicinity of Tucson, 
Arizona Territory, where I found it abun¬ 
dant both Summer and Winter. Its range 
extends, in all probability, throughout the 
southern border of New Mexico and Ari¬ 
zona Territories. I have no positive in¬ 
formation as yet that it has been taken in 
any other locality than the one above men¬ 
tioned. It is strange that such a common 
species should have been overlooked by 
the naturalists of the southwestern boun¬ 
dary survey, but such was the case, and it 
was left for me to add this bird to our avi¬ 
fauna. I took my first specimens on June 
10, 1872, and after spending many hours 
in vain .in trying to locate them, my orni¬ 
thological library, consisting at the time of 
but a single volume, the Text of the Birds 
of North America, by Bau’d, Cassin and 
Lawrence, I of course failed to find the 
bird in that work, as it was an undescribed 
species, nothing was left for me to do but 
to try and make a few skins to send East 
for identification. I believe this was one 
of my first attempts in this line, at least 
on so small a bird. I managed to strip 
the hide off in some way, perhaps most of 
the readers of the O. and O. have tried it 
themselves, and know exactly how it works, 
and my skins after they were done looked 
as if a dog had chewed them for a short 
time ; still there was enough of the origi¬ 
nal bird left to construct a new species out 
of it. I omit gmng a detailed description 
of the bird as it can be found in Mr. W. 
H. Henshaw’s report to Lieut. George N. 
Wheeler, Vol. 5 United States Geographi¬ 
cal Surveys, West of 100th Meridian, 1875, 
Page 291. 
I found these birds very common on the 
ridges bordering Rillitto Creek, a little 
back from the creek bottom proper, but 
seldom any great distance from the latter 
in the dry and arid cactus covered plains. 
The Rufous-winged SpaiTow seemed to 
be particularly partial to a strip of country 
scarcely a mile in length by four hundred 
yards wide running parallel to the creek 
and near the present site of Camp Lowell. 
This piece of ground was then covered 
with good sized mescpute trees interspersed 
with sage and thorn bushes, small under¬ 
growth and bunches of tall rye and mes- 
quite grasses. In this conq^aratively small 
sjjace I found not less than forty-three of 
their nests with eggs and a still larger 
number of those of the Black-throated 
Sj^arrow which were still more common, 
besides a number of nests containing young 
birds in various stages of growth. 
The nest is usually placed in low bushes 
I^referably small mesquite bushes, from six 
inches to five feet from the ground, most 
frequently, however, about eighteen inches 
high, and no especial attempt is made at 
concealment. It is firmly fixed into a fork 
or crotch of the bush in which it is built, 
and is a compact structure, composed ex¬ 
ternally of coarse grasses and lined with 
the fine tops of the mesquite grass, and 
not unfrequently a few horse hairs when 
such are obtainable. These nests are 
