SOCORRO WARBLER
HABITS
The Socorro warbler is closely related to Sennett’s warbler and other races of pitiayumi but is accepted as a distinct species. It differs from nigrilora in having gray, instead of black, lores and cheeks, and in having much less white on the inner webs of the outer rectrices. It was supposed to be confined to Socorro Island, one of the Revillagigedo group, about 250 miles southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. It was added to our fauna by Chester C. Lamb (1925), who states:
On November 3, 1923, I collected one of these birds at Todos Santos, on the Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula of Lower California, some forty miles north of Cape San Lucas. * * * On February 5, 1924, I saw another of these little warblers, within a few feet of me; but my gun was not at hand, so I had to be content with a sight record. The locality was inland, at El Oro, on the east side of the Victoria Mountains, about thirty miles from Todos Santos. The next occurrence, like the first, was at Todos Santos, where, on July 23, 1924, I secured an adult female which is now in my collection at the Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles. The taking of these two birds, in the winter and summer of two successive years, would indicate that the species is of more or less regular occurrence in the Cape Region of Lower California. The capture of a specimen in July suggests the possibility of breeding at the point of record.
Nothing more seems to have been heard of the species since. And we know nothing of its habits.
DISTRIBUTION
Range.—Socorro Island and the Cape region of Baja California.
Breeding range.—The Socorro warbler is known to breed only on Socorro Island, where it is resident. It has been found in the breeding season near Todos Santos, Baja California.