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MA.. ?9o3[ THE CONDOR ing away. I examined the place, but found nothing to account for their presence. At the Natural Bridge near Fort Verde, I saw several nests of this bird in x893, some of which were old, but several new and containing young. One or two were in cups in the rock of the bridge; the others in giant sycamores; that grew in the narrow canyon. The old Scotchnmn, Dave Gowan, who owns the bridge, called them "Black Faulcons," and said they had nested there for years. They are much more common in this section, than in the southeast corner of the territory. The California Yellow Warbler. BY JOSEPH GRINNELL. HE object of the present paper is to recall attention to the California race of the yellow warbler with a view to its being generally recognized in nomen- clature. The fact that skins from certain western localities exhibit peculiar- ities in size and color is not by any means a new one. That keenest of last-century systematists, Baird, in ?858 noted that "specimens from the Pacific coast appear rather smaller, with less conspicuous streaks than eastern, but no other differences are appreciable." Nearly thirty years later, in ?887, Coale worked over the yel- low warblers of North America, with the result that "the western race" was given the name Z)endroica ?stiva morcomi, typeship being conferred on a skin from Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Shortly after, Ridgway included a description of the subspecies in regular standing in his Manual, where it remained in the last edition. In ?899 the A. O. U. Committee rejected the race, and it has not since been recon- sidered. In spite of the A. O. U. Comnfittee's ruling a few independently observ- ant students have since then ventured to recognize the "Western Yellow Warbler," using Coale's name. Ridgway has recently changed his opinion as to the value of the characters assigned in his Manual. For in Part II of his Birds of North and Middle America, he writes in a foot-note: "I am not able to make out satisfactor- ily a western form (D. ?. morcomi Coale). Western specimens seem, as a rule, to have shorter wings and longer tails than eastern examples, and adult males are often much less heavily streaked beneath; but the differences appear much too in- constant to justify recognition of a western subspecies." Finally Brewster, in his Birds of the Cape Region of Lower California, makes the following well-considered observations: "The remaining six birds [from the Cape Region] apparently be- long to the form which breeds in California, and which, although usually called ?stiva, has been referred by a few writers to motcoral. It differs rather constantly from ?stiva of eastern North America in having the chestnut streaks on the under parts narrower and fainter in this respect, showing an approach to sonorana, from which, however, it may be readily distinguished by the decidedly darker, greener coloring of its upper parts. The female is similar to ?sti7?a (although less often streaked beneath) and hence quite different from that of sonorana, which is gray- ish above and clay-colored beneath. with but faint traces of yellowish on the body plumage. On the whole the yellow warbler of California seems to me too nearly like true ?stiva to be recognized as a distinct subspecies. In any case it should not be called morcomi. At least Mr. Ridgway and I agree in considering the type of that supposed form merely an exceptionally faintly streaked specimen of ?estiva, of which, moreover, the National Museum possesses a number of perfectly tyl)ical