752 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
Kansas and western Missouri. Here this fine bird swarms in thickets 
and hedgerows during October, and again in April, filling the air with 
its rollicking whistled calls. At the height of the migration thousands 
may be seen in a single day, but outside this strip, which is barely two 
hundred and fifty miles wide, the bird is casual or rare. No other 
bird has this distribution, which lies along the lines where forms of the 
eastern half of the countiy begin to disappear and those of the west to 
appear” (1926a, pp. 202-203). 
Additional Literature.—Cooke, W. W., Auk, I, 332-337, 1884. 
WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW: Zonotrichia leucophrys (J. R. Forster) 
Description. — Male: Length (skins) 5.S-6.7 inches, wing 3-3.3, tail 2.7-3.2, 
bill .4-.5. Female: Length (skins) 6-6.6 inches, wing 3-3.2, tail 2.7-3, bill .4-.5. 
Adult male: Head striped , black and white stripes of about equal width; lores black; 
hind neck gray, back and scapulars gray, 
broadly streaked with brown, rump and 
upper tail coverts and tail hair brown, tail 
with paler edgings; wings with two white 
bands; underparts gray, darkest on chest, 
sides and flanks pale buffy brown; bill 
cinnamon-brown, tip dusky. Adult female: 
Sometimes indistinguishable from male 
but usually with median crown stripe nar¬ 
rower and partly gray. Immature: Similar 
to adults but head stripes brown and buffy 
instead of black and white, and under- 
parts more or less buffy. Young in 
juvenal plumage: Lateral crown stripes 
light brown and median stripe buffy, 
all streaked with dusky, lores partly 
brownish; underparts buffy whitish, chest 
and sides streaked with dusky. 
Range. —Breeds in Hudsonian and 
Canadian Zones from limit of trees in 
central Keewatin, northern Quebec, and 
southern Greenland south to southern 
Quebec, Manitoba, southwestern Saskat¬ 
chewan, southeastern British Columbia, 
and in high mountains from northern Oregon to central California, east to north¬ 
ern Montana and south to southern New Mexico; winters from northern Lower 
California, New Mexico, southern Texas, southern Kansas, and Ohio Valley south 
to Louisiana and Mississippi, and over Mexican plateau to Guanajuato, Jalisco, 
and Sinaloa. 
. State Records. —The most southern extension of the breeding range of the 
White-crowned Sparrow occurs in the high mountains of northern New Mexico. 
Here, on July 27, 1903, nearly fledged young were found at 11,000 feet near Pecos 
Baldy on Jack Creek. The old birds were common in the willows at 11,600 feet 
at the foot of Pecos Baldy and were singing up to timberline at over 12,000 feet. 
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