Figure 437. Pyrrhuloxias have twice been found attempting to nest at Chemehuevi Wash in eastern San Bernardino County. This female, photographed on 29 May 1995, participated in the second effort (1995-056; Don Roberson).

 

 

 

 

 

PYRRHULOXIA Cardinalis sinuata Bonaparte, 1838

Accepted: 23 (88%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 3	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 9	Color image: none

This species’ northwestern subspecies, C. s. fulvescens, occupies the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona south to northern Nayarit and western Durango; C. s. sinuatus occupies the Chihuahuan Desert from extreme southwestern Arizona east to south-central Texas and south through the Mexican Plateau to northern Michoacán and Querétaro; and C. s. peninsulae occupies Baja California Sur. Birds disperse generally short distances north and east of the breeding range but have strayed much farther, yielding records from southern Nevada, central and northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, western Oklahoma, northern and east-central Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and south-central Montana. The Ontario Bird Records Committee accepted the identification of a first-winter female photographed in southern Ontario during the period 23 December 2004–1 January 2005 but deferred making a final decision as to its wild status (Crins 2006). Patten (2006) identified a pattern of fall/winter vagrancy north and east of the species’ range versus spring/summer vagrancy to the west, a difference that might be explained by eastern sinuatus breeding and dispersing earlier than western fulvescens.

California’s first Pyrrhuloxia was a male that returned to Heise Springs, located north of Westmorland in Imperial County, for three consecutive winters starting in 1971 (McCaskie 1971b). After one more winter record from Imperial County came a string of 18 Pyrrhuloxias between 7 May and 31 July. All but a handful of the state’s accepted records come from the Colorado and Mojave Deserts, and two involve breeding attempts at Chemehuevi Wash, a tributary to the Colorado River located south of Needles in San Bernardino County. The first attempt, in 1977, was by a single pair; the second attempt, in 1995, involved a pair plus two nearby unmated males. The species occurs only irregularly in the Mohawk and Castle Dome Mts. of southwestern Arizona (Monson and Phillips 1981) and in the lower Colorado River Valley (Rosenberg et al. 1991). Recent field work for the Arizona Breeding Bird Atlas yielded no sightings within 60 miles of the California border (Corman and Wise-Gervais 2005).

The following coastal slope records fit the established pattern of spring/summer vagrancy: Corona, Riverside County, 23 July 1982 (two birds); Encinitas, San Diego County, 26–27 May 1983; San Miguel Island, Santa Barbara County, 19–23 July 1990; and Pt. Loma, San Diego County, 10 June 1998. The last of these, involving a “ragged” female, was not accepted during initial review due to concerns about proximity to Tijuana and San Diego. The record was, however, accepted upon re-review because it fit with the overall coastal pattern and because year-old Pyrrhuloxias normally look somewhat worn at this time of year. Another record that the Committee initially failed to endorse—the unique coastal winter record of a female present 7 February–14 March 1999 in Costa Mesa, Orange County—was also accepted at a later time.

Pyrrhuloxias do not share the Northern Cardinal’s history of large-scale importation into California, and far fewer of them are sold in northwestern Baja California, although up to five per day have been encountered in pet shops there (Hamilton 2001). As with any species generally believed to occur in California both naturally and as an escapee, determining natural occurrence for any given record—particularly in cities and close to the international border—is problematic. Unitt (2004) lamented the ever-increasing difficulty of divining the provenance of Mexican songbirds in San Diego County.

 

[YELLOW GROSBEAK Pheucticus chrysopeplus (Vigors, 1832) – see hypothetical section and Appendix H]