Dusky Warbler at Berkeley, California
Dusky Warbler at Berkeley, California
On February 23, 1920, Dr. William F. Bade handed me a recently dead Dusky Warbler (Vermivora celata sordida) which he had just picked up in his backyard at 2616 College Avenue, Berkeley. The feathers in a spot on the throat and on the forehead were gone, as if slugs had been at work on the bird, so that it must have met its death the preceding night or before. Upon skinning, I found wounds in the body which suggested that it had encountered the claws of a cat. The bird was a female in good feather. It was somewhat discolored by town soot, so that it had probably been living in the well-known smoke belt of Berkeley and Oakland for some time, perhaps wintering here. The specimen is preserved in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology as no. 40396 of its bird collection, and authenticates the occurrence of the Dusky Warbler a little farther north than heretofore reported. The two other stations for the San Francisco Bay region are Hayward and Palo Alto--occurrences in December, January and February (see Pac. Coast Avif., no. 11, 1915, p. 146). The northernmost breeding point for this warbler so far as known is Santa Rosa Island, below Point Conception. Part of the winter habitat of the bird thus lies some 260 miles to the northward of its summer range, as well as over 100 miles to the westward.
J. Grinnell
California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, March 22, 1920
