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BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
Mount Capitan to the lower edge of the juniper belt at about 5,500 feet (Bailey). 
In western New Mexico it is much more restricted in range and has not been recorded 
north of Deming (Mearns) and Apache (Anthony). 
A single specimen was taken in the fall of 1883 near Willis at 7,800 feet (Henshaw), 
where it was, of course, a straggler.—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —On the ground, in low bushes or tufts of grass; deeply cupped, made of 
grass blades and stems, weed stems, bark, and vegetable fibers, lined with finer grass. 
Eggs: 3 to 5, pure white or bluish white. 
General Habits. —Although found sometimes in the tall grass and 
in meadowy tracts around springs, colonies of the sandy Cassin Sparrow 
are most numerous on dry plains with a growth of short grass inter¬ 
spersed with small shrubs and bushes. They are also seen on the 
inesquite plains in yucca patches, as between Roswell and Mount 
Capitan, or, as Mr. Henshaw found, on barren hillsides where cactus 
and only the most hardy vegetation can maintain a foothold and where 
the fierce heat of the sun's rays beats down upon the sandy ground. 
When you pass through their country while the birds are in full 
spring song, one by one the hidden songsters spring up perhaps twenty 
feet into the air, when, with wings outspread and heads uplifted in a 
rapture of song, they give themselves to the air, floating slowly down 
as they sing. The rarely beautiful song, as Mr. Henshaw describes it, 
“ begins with a low tremulous trill, followed by slow and plaintive 
syllables, the last of which is softer and more prolonged, and in a lower 
key. Though little varied ... it yet possesses an indescribable 
sweetness and pathos, especially when heard, as is often the case, 
during the still hours of the night. During a night’s march from Camp 
Grant to Camp Bowie, I do not think an interval of five minutes passed 
unbroken by the song of one of these Sparrows. Ere fairly out of hearing 
of the notes of one performer, the same plaintive strain was taken up 
by another invisible musician a little farther on, and so it continued 
till just before dawn" (1875, p. 289). 
Additional Literature.—Heksey, L. J., and R. B. Rockwell, Condor, IX, 
191-194, 1907 (nest).— Torrey, Bradford, Nature’s Invitation, 263-265, 1904 
(song). 
DESERT BLACK-THROATED SPARROW: Amphispiza bilineata deserticola 
Ridgway 
Description. — Male ; Length (skins) 4.9-5.4 inches, wing 2.5-2.8, tail 2.4-2.7, 
bill .4. Female: Length (skins) 4.8-5/2 inches, wing 2.4-2.6, tail 2.3-2.S, bill .4. 
Bill moderate, conical; tail rounded, nearly equal to wings. Adults: Upper-parts 
deep brownish gray, becoming nearly hair-brown on back and wings; tail blackish, 
outside feathers marked with white; lores and throat patch black, line over eye, malar 
streak, and underparts white , shading into grayish on sides and flanks; bill below, pale 
bluish gray with dusky tip. Young: Without distinct black markings, throat white, 
back and chest lightly streaked, wing bar buffy. 
Range. —Sonoran Zones on arid plains from southeastern Oregon (probably), 
California, northern Nevada, northern Utah, southern and southwestern Colorado, 
