Hepatic Tanager Vagrant to Coastal Section of California
Hepatic Tanager Vagrant to Coastal Section of California.---- November 8, 1959, an Hepatic Tanager (Pirunga fEavo hepaticu) wits taken by the junior author at a point two miles south and eight miles east of Shandon, San Luis Obispo County, California. This is apparently the first record of this species supported by specimen evidence from the coastal section of California. The Hepatic Tanager is known to breed in the higher mountains of Arizona near the lower Colorado River Valley, some 400 miles distant. The Summer Tanager (Piranga Y&U), both its eastern and western races, is now being detected in increasing numbers as a vagrant to the Pacific coast (A.O.U. Check-list, fifth ed., 1957:545-546).
The tanager found near Shandon visited a fig tree after having bathed in a shallow pool from the overflow of a water tank. Several Brewer Blackbirds (Euphagus cyanocephalus) were bathing at the same time. The tanager was a male in yellow postjuvenal body plumage and was a bird-of-theyear, as shown by the skull, which was incompletely ossified. The bird was in good physical condition and the wing and tail feathers of the specimen (Mus. Vert. Zool. no. 142145) showed no evidence of wear that would suggest a period of Caivity.-ALDEN H. MILLER, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, and EBEN MCMILLAN, Shandon, California, November 16, 1963
