BULLETIN
— OF THE —
Cooper Ornithological Club
A Bi-monthly Exponent of Californian Ornithology
The Rhinoceros Auklet at Catalina Island.
BY JOS. GRINNELL, PASADENA, CAL.
[Read before the Southern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club.]
TAKING advantage of the recent Christmas vacation, I spent several days at Catalina Island, which lies about 25 miles off the coast of Southern California. Although it was the last week in December, when the hills are generally beginning to take on a green hue, I found the landscape very dry and apparently not very inviting to most land-birds. However, in the ravines and in the wash extending back of Avalon, small birds, such as they were, were very numerous.
In the brush two subspecies of Fox Sparrows and a race of the Spurred Towhee were abundant and made a constant racket, scratching among the dead leaves. The noise that a pair of Fox Sparrows can produce from a pile of dry twigs and leaves is really remarkable and out of all proportion to the size of the bird. I saw a whole flock of quail hurry through a thicket in the bottom of a ravine without half the clatter that a sparrow on the hill-side, fifty yards away, was raising. Everyone who goes hunting at Catalina is ever on the lookout for foxes, which are numerous on the Island, and there is scarcely any one who does not stop and listen with gun ready for use, when he hears the rythmic rustle of dry leaves anmng the dark bushes ahead of him. After all, these little birds may, at least on Catalina, merit with propriety their name of "Fox" Sparrows.
Besides the sparrows, the most abundant, and by far the most noticeable birds, were the familiar Audubon's Warblers. They were everywhere, and individuals were to be seen even on the beaches within a few feet of the surf, as usual, busily engaged in catching flies. Dusky Warblers and Vigor's Wrens were fairly numerous, but very quiet and secretive, a mood in which they are seldom found. Possibly the next rain, if it ever comes, will dispel their gloom, and restore their naturally good spirits. At any rate I hope they will be more sociable next the time I visit Catalina, for I succeeded in obtaining only ten specimens of each, where I had expected to secure a good series of twenty or thirty.
Mockingbirds were present in moderate numbers, but were likewise quiet. Indeed, I did not hear a word from them, except their ordinary harsh call-note. They, in common with the linnets, were feeding on the ripe red fruit of the cholla cactus. Possibly some of the cactus prickers, which render this fruit so distressing to persons when they eat it in a hurry, had got stuck in their throats, so they could not sing. There is a good opportunity for any aspiring ornithologist to make a new species out of the Catalina Mockingbird. All that I saw, had bright red faces, which is quite unusual in this genus, but the cactus may have had something to do with this also! However with the cactus factor acting on the Catalina Mockingbirds for several centuries, a truly distinct species may
