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Pigmy Nuthatch in Oklahoma

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Several montane species of birds occur in Oklahoma solely because the Black Mesa, a spur of the Rocky Mountains, extends into the extreme northwestern comer of the Panhandle (see Sutton, Ann. Carnegie Mus., 24, 1934:1-50). The writer is now able, through the courtesy of Mr. George H. Lowery, Jr., of the Museum of Zoology of Louisiana State University, to add another such species to the list-the Pigmy Nuthatch of the race Sitta pygmaea melanotis. Mr. Lowery himself took the specimen, a breeding female, with well-defined brood-patch. It was collected near Kenton, Cimarron County, in the very shadow of the Black Mesa, on May 22, 1937. The whole region was swept by a black dust storm on the preceding day-a cataclysm which the writer, who was present at the time, will never forget !-but, granted that the nuthatch could have been blown in, or become lost in the sudden darkness, it is unlikely that it was far from its nest at the time it was collected. It is now at Cornell University, where most of the writer’s collections from Oklahoma are housed.

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, November 3, 1941

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