Plectrophanes maccowni, Lawrence.
CHESTNUT-SHOULDERED LONGSPUR; MACCOWN’S BUNTING.
Plectrophanes maccowni, Lawrence, Ann. N. Y. Lyc. V, Sept. 1851, 122. Western Texas.—Cassin, Illust. I, viii, 1855, 228, pl. xxxix.—Heerm. X, c, p. 13.—Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 437.
Plectrophanes maccownii, Lawr.
6282 ♂
Sp. Char. Male in spring. Top of head, a broad stripe each side the throat from lower mandible, and a broad crescent on jugulum, black; side of head including lores and band above the eye, throat, and under parts, ashy-white; ear-coverts bordered above and behind by blackish, running out at the maxillary stripe. Breast just behind the black crescent and sides, showing dark bases of feathers. Upper parts ashy, tinged with yellowish on the mandible, and streaked with dusky; least so on nape and rump. Lesser wing-coverts ashy; median chestnut-brown, with blackish bases sometimes evident; the quills all bordered broadly externally with whitish, becoming more ashy on secondaries. Tail-feathers white except at the concealed bases and the ends, which have a transverse (not oblique) tip of blackish; the outermost white to the end; the two central like the back. Bill dark plumbeous; legs blackish. In winter the markings more or less obscured; the bill and legs more yellowish.
Female lacks the black markings, which, however, are indicated obsoletely as in other Plectrophanes; there is no trace of chestnut on the wings, no streaks on the breast. Length, 5.50; wing, 3.60; tail, 2.50; bill, .46.
Hab. Eastern slopes of Rocky Mountains, from Texas to Upper Missouri.
This species varies considerably in markings, but is readily recognized among other Plectrophanes in all stages by short hind toe, very stout bill, and the transverse dark bar at the end of all tail-feathers except the inner and outer.
Habits. Maccown’s Lark Bunting is yet another of the various species of our birds whose history is very little known, and in regard to which the most we are able to state, at present, is that they appear in different parts of the interior plains of the United States, between the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River and the lower tributaries of the Mississippi, extending from New Mexico and Texas northward, during the breeding-season,