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A Specimen of Bendire Thrasher in the San Diegan Region

Loye Miller

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September 10, 1912, Mrs. Harriet Williams Myers placed in my hands a live bird which had proven a puzzle to her in her attempts to identify it. The bird had been picked up helpless in a street of the Garvanza district of Los Angeles, California, near the hills between that city and Pasadena, and despite her most painstaking care had failed to mend. It was turned over to me as of possible interest, and proved to be Toxostoma bendirei (Coues).

The specimen was submitted in final appeal to Messrs. Grinnell and Swarth of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley, who consider it a juvenal of the year, just molting into first winter plumage. Mr. Grinnell raises the question of possible artificial introduction as a caged bird, a natural question in view of the sedentary habit of the species in its normal habitat. The superb musical powers of the species would make it a desirable cage bird, but, in a somewhat extensive collecting experience over southern Arizona, although I found Cardinals and House Finches used in this way, the thrashers never were. With the consent of Mrs. Myers the specimen is deposited in the University of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology where it is catalogued as No. 23259.

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