FINCHES, SPARROWS, ETC.: PINE SISKIN 
699 
flew out of the cloud and lit on near-by stones. An adult male was 
collected. Two days afterwards our Taos camp man, Sun-Elk, obtained 
another adult male at the same place, from a flock of five, the rest 
circling around and then flying down the ridge. The gizzard of one 
of those taken was filled with small seeds, with the addition of one 
small insect, and that of the other was filled with finely ground insects 
and small seeds, the crop filled with small insects of several different 
kinds. The color of the flesh was bright red and the fat deep orange. 
Although there are only small snowbanks on the highest of these 
mountains in midsummer, the beautiful Rosy Finches are generally 
found in the region of large bodies of snow; their favorite resort, as 
Doctor Rothrock says, being “the edges of snow banks, where they 
find grass seeds, and also a small black coleopterous insect” (in Hen- 
shaw, 1875, p. 250). The large mixed flock of leucostictes, which 
Mr. Ligon found in Colfax County, “were industriously feeding on 
each side of a sparsely traveled mountain road, where the snow had 
partly disappeared” (MS). 
The presence of these rare northerners, together with the Bohemian 
Waxwing and White-tailed Ptarmigan, in New Mexico, is matter for 
sincere gratulation, and adds new interest to the noble mountains 
that crown the State. 
PINE SISKIN; PINE FINCH: Spmus pinus pmus (Wilson) 
Description. — Male: Length (skins) 4.2-4.8 inches, wing 2.7-3, tail 1.6-1.8, 
bill .4. Female: Length (skins) 4.2-5.1 inches, wing 2.6-3, tail 1.6-1.8, bill .4-.5. 
Adults: Entire head and body streaked with dusky (except on posterior underparts) 
on grayish or brownish ground above, on whitish below; wings and tail dusky or 
blackish (wings with two whitish bars), and basal portion of wing and tail quills 
pale yellow. Young: Similar to adults but wing bars buffy and underparts often 
tinged with sulphur-yellow. 
Range. —Breeds mainly in Canadian Zone from central Alaska, southern Mac¬ 
kenzie, southern Keewatin, and Quebec south to Nova Scotia (in mountains to 
North Carolina), northern Michigan, southern New Mexico, and higher mountains 
of western United States to Sierra Juarez and Sierra San Pedro Martir, Lower 
California; occurs in winter over most of United States and British Columbia, 
south to western Mexico; casual in southern Lower California. 
State Records. —[Apparently the only recorded nest of the Pine Siskin in 
New Mexico is that found by Jensen’s son, June 3, 1920, on the Santa Fe Indian 
School campus in a box-elder about twelve feet from the ground. It is usually 
common there during April and May, leaving for the mountains about June 1.] 
It is very irregular in its movements and likely to be found almost anywhere at 
any time of the year, but in Colorado its nests have been found principally in the 
lower foothills or even out on the plains. Later in the season or indeed almost 
throughout the year it is found high up in the mountains almost to timberline. 
[It is one of the commonest species in the Sangre de Cristo range, occurring at all 
altitudes (1919); observed above timberline on Wheeler and other peaks, June 
18 and 19, 1924, and found abundant at Mootz Ranch west of Elizabethtown in 
