eWestern Birds
The Quarterly Journal of Western Field Ornithologists
Dispersal and Vagrancy in the Pyrrhuloxia
Michael A. Patten
ABSTRACT: The Pyrrhuloxia (Cardinalis sinuatus) frequently is considered sedentary. A compilation of extralimital records, however, shows that the species wanders regularly in late fall and winter (chiefly November through March) north and east of its United States range and wanders casually in the spring and summer (May through July) west of this range. There are even six records well outside the species’ normal range. The differing geographic and temporal distributions of extralimital records coincide with two subspecies (nominate C. s. sinuatus in the east and C. s. fulvescens in the west), hinting at the possibility of underlying differences in breeding biology and dispersal timing between the subspecies.