560 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
From Mesilla Park, Professor Merrill wrote later: “The Crissal 
Thrasher is most numerous in the creosote belt and in the wide arroyos 
where the mimbres grow more profusely, but it is found nesting in 
bushes in the foothills and in the valley among mesquites and tornillos. 
In winter it is more numerous in the lower levels. By the first of July 
the young are fully fledged and in early morning on the mesa one can 
see whole families disporting themselves together, running and flying 
after each other, singing and calling and feeding between times. The 
song is rich and full but not greatly varied nor very loud. Early morn¬ 
ing in summer and a warm midday in winter will occasion bursts of 
song. This bird often sings from the ground instead of always perching 
on top of a bush. Gizzards of some summer specimens showed 
quantities of ants with bits of some vegetation” (MS). 
The Crissal is such a close sitter that Mr. Gilman has been able 
to approach a brooding bird near enough to see “the extremely curved 
bill and straw-colored eyes” (1909a, p. 52). Its flight is bobbing and 
jerky. Its call notes “ queety-queety” and a scolding “ cha y ” are some¬ 
times heard from the mesquite, and, when tempted by water, the 
thicket-loving bird may come to drink with the chickens and dig in 
the garden, the strong pickaxe bill and large feet characteristic of the 
Thrashers making effective implements. 
SAGE THRASHER: Oreoscoptes montanus (J. K. Townsend) 
Plate 61 
Description. — Length: 8-9 inches, wing 3.9-4.3, tail 3.2-3.3, hill .6, tarsus 1.1. 
Bill much shorter than head, wings and tail of equal length, tail graduated. Adults: 
Underparts dull grayish brown, feathers with obsoletely darker centers; wings and 
tail blackish, tail with inner web of two to four outer feathers tipped with white, wings 
with two narrow white bars; under parts whitish, more or less tinged with pale huffy 
brown, breast and sides streaked; iris lemon yellow, legs and feet olivaceous, soles 
yellowish. Young in juvenal plumage: Upperparts as well as underparts streaked, 
ground color of upperparts browner than in adults. 
Range. —Breeds on arid sagebrush plains and foothills in Transition and Upper 
Sonoran Zones from southern British Columbia, prairie regions of Montana, and 
western Nebraska south to northern New Mexico and eastern California; winters 
from southern California, southern Arizona, and central Texas to Tamaulipas, 
Chihuahua, Cape San Lucas, and (casually) Guadalupe Island. 
State Records. —The breeding records of the Sage Thrasher in New Mexico 
come from the northwestern part of the State where it breeds at Shiprock (Gilman); 
at Fort Wingate (Henshaw); and at Lake Burford, July, 1913 (Ligon). [A nest with 
half grown young was found, May 30, 1922, on the Pinyon Flats three miles south 
of the Santa Fe Indian School. Two additional pairs were seen near by (Jensen). 
It was common and singing about Tres Piedras in May, and breeds as far south as 
Grant—west side of Mount Taylor, where a tongue of sage reaches down (Ligon, 
1916-1918).! It was seen July 10, 1904, near Taos, and one was taken on the mesa 
near Albuquerque the middle of July, 1889 (Bailey); both of which records probably 
indicate breeding birds, though the species is not a common breeder anywhere in 
