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Articles

Vol. 49 No. 1 (2018)

EXTENSION OF THE BREEDING RANGE OF THE BLACK ROSY-FINCH IN WYOMING

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21199/WB49.1.7
Submitted
September 16, 2025
Published
January 1, 2018

Abstract

 The Black Rosy-Finch (Leucosticte atrata) is one of the least studied bird species in North America, owing to its nesting in high alpine habitat, predominantly in cliffs (Johnson 2002). It breeds in low densities from west-central Montana/northeastern Idaho east to northwestern Wyoming, south to southern Utah, and west to northeastern Nevada/southeastern Oregon (Johnson 2002). It nests in most contiguous mountain ranges of northwestern Wyoming: the Wind River Range (Cary 1917), the Absaroka Range (Miller 1925), the Gallatin Range (Bailey 1930), the Gros Ventre Range (Fuller and Bole 1930), the Teton Range (French 1954), and the Beartooth Mountains (Hoffmann and Taber 1960) (Figure 1). The Black Rosy-Finch is known to occur in the isolated Bighorn Mountains (see Johnson 2002, Faulkner 2010), where reported incorrectly as the Brown-capped Rosy-Finch (L. australis) by Carpenter (1876) and as the Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch (L. tephrocotis) beginning with Grave and Walker (1913), an error corrected by Mengel and Mengel (1952). We here report Black Rosy-Finches breeding in the Wyoming Range (observed by Johnson in 2002 and Brown in 2015) and in the Salt River and Snake River ranges (observed by Brown in 2015) (Figure 1), where no previous nesting records are known. These mountain ranges are clustered and abut others where the species is known to breed. The inclusion of the Salt, Snake River, and Wyoming ranges bridges the gap, where suitable habitat is available, in the Black Rosy-Finch’s distribution between northwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah. We also observed nesting pairs within the species’ previously documented distribution.

References