Beneath white with a faint ochraceous tinge, especially on the legs; the breast, abdomen, and sides with transverse spots of brown, this often predominating on the breast; legs, anal region, and crissum, immaculate. Whole lining of the wing immaculate creamy-white, the primary coverts, however, with large terminal spots of dusky; under surface of the primaries grayish-brown, deeper terminally, and with large, transversely ovate spots of ochraceous-white (about five in number on the longest quill), and growing larger basally. ♂. Wing, 6.40–7.00; tail, 3.00–3.30; culmen, .55–.60; tarsus, 1.50–1.70; middle toe, .80. (Smallest, No. 5,183, Fort Pierre, Nebraska; largest, No. 6,881, Sacramento, California.) ♀. Wing, 6.50–6.80; tail, 3.15–3.30; culmen, .51–.55; tarsus, 1.50–1.60; middle toe, .80. (Smallest, No. 45,020, Laredo, Texas; largest, No. 3,971, San José, Lower California.) _Juv._ Upper surface earth-brown, as in the adult, but entirely uniform, except the wings and tail; upper tail-coverts, and a large oval patch on the wing (covering the middle coverts and the posterior half of the lesser-covert region), plain isabella-white; the anterior portion of the lesser-covert region darker brown than the back. Gular region well-defined pure white; jugular collar conspicuous and unspotted. Whole lower parts immaculate isabella-white. HAB. Western Province of United States, from the Plains to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to Cape St. Lucas; Mexico. Localities: Xalapa (SCL. 1857, 290); Texas (DRESSER, Ibis, 1865, 330; resident). Specimens never vary in the pattern of coloration, and but little in the relative amount of the brown and white spotting; the shade of the brown and the depth of the ochraceous tinge vary considerably, however, in different individuals,—but irrespective of locality,—the brown being paler and the white purer in summer than in fall and winter, after the new dress is freshly assumed. The brown on the breast varies considerably in quantity, being sometimes nearly uniform, thereby abruptly contrasting with the white jugular band, and again frequently with the brown hardly greater in amount than the white, the two colors being in regular bars, as on the sides and flanks.