THE BOHEMIAN WAXWING: A COSMOPOLITE 453 
while on an expedition from the California Museum of 
Vertebrate Zoology. 
There is an early American record of the Bohemian 
Waxwing that is of more than ordinary interest to Cali- 
fornians. On January 10, 1861, Dr. J. G. Cooper shot one 
of the birds at Fort Mojave, Arizona, the first known 
instance of occurrence in the United States west of the 
Rocky Mountains and for many years the southernmost 
point at which the species had been found. So extraordinary 
did it seem for this denizen of the north woods to turn up 
on the arid wastes of the Colorado Desert that the sug- 
gestion arose from other writers that perhaps a mistake 
had been made. Whatever doubt may have been felt, how- 
ever, has since been satisfactorily dispelled. A large part 
of Dr. Cooper’s collection of birds and mammals later came 
into the possession of the University of California, to be 
eventually installed in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 
and among his birds was found this historic specimen of the 
Waxwing. 
This solitary wanderer was the first of its kind to be 
found in Arizona. On December 18, 1919, the present 
writer, together with Mrs. Swarth, was fortunate in making 
a second observation. We had just arrived at the Grand 
Cafion and were walking toward the brink for our first 
view of the famous gorge, when a whirr of wings and a 
subdued hissing close overhead drew our excited attention 
to a flock of Waxwings. The view was forgotten temporarily 
—the Cafion would stay there, the birds probably would 
not; there were fifteen of them in the top of a little juniper, 
bolting mistletoe berries so eagerly as to ignore all else, and 
we watched them at a distance of but a few feet, the nearest 
almost within arm’s reach. 
The young birds shown on the accompanying plate 
illustrate a curious feature in the variation that occurs 
within this species. The more conspicuous variable features 
in the Waxwing are, first of all, the ““wax” wing tips, which, 
in adult birds, range in number from a maximum of eight 
down to a total absence of such ornaments, and there is 
