512 BUCCONIDZ. 
Bucco dysoni is one of a small group of black and white species of the genus Bucco 
which extend over most of tropical America, from Southern Brazil to the confines of 
Mexico, and has the most northern range of them all. It is the only species of the 
larger members of this section found within our limits. In South America the allied 
forms are :—B. macrorhynchus of Guiana and the Lower Amazons Valley, in which 
the white of the forehead is very restricted and does not reach to a line drawn between 
the eyes; B. hyperrhynchus of the Amazons Valley generally, in which the white of 
the forehead is wide and reaches quite to the middle of the crown, the bill in this 
species being very large; and B. swainsoni of South Brazil, more readily distinguished 
by the rufescent tinge of the abdomen. B. dysoni is somewhat intermediate between 
B. macrorhynchus and B. hyperrhynchus, having a rather wide frontal white band which 
is produced over each eye as a superciliary stripe. The name B. dysont was based 
upon a specimen in the British Museum obtained by Dyson in Honduras, to which 
the late G. R. Gray had attached the discoverers name!, subsequently adopted by 
Mr. Sclater 2. Bonaparte’s uncharacterized title, Tamatia gigas \", most probably 
refers to the same bird, as do also Mr Sclater’s B. napensis © and B. leucocrissus '*—the 
former based upon a bird from the Napo Valley in Eastern Ecuador, the latter from 
Fraser’s specimens obtained in the same country but on the western side of the Andes. 
Mr. Sclater now merges all these names under B. dysoni?*, and we think rightly so, 
though we notice that the Napo birds before us and others from Sarayacu in the same 
district have very dark flanks, the light cross-bands being not nearly so distinct as in 
the northern bird. 
The northern limit of the range of B. dysoni is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where 
Sumichrast noticed it 812, and it also occurs in the western parts of British Honduras. 
In Guatemala it is found in the vast forests of northern Vera Paz, where we observed. 
it on more than one occasion, but perched on such lofty trees that we did not succeed 
in securing a specimen. On the Pacific side of the mountains, however, near Escuintla, 
Godman shot a pair from a high tree at an elevation of about 3000 feet above the sea. 
In Nicaragua, Belt met with it at Chontales !°, and Mr. Richmond on the Rio Escon- 
dido }°, where he says the specimen he shot was in forest catching insects very like a 
Tyrannus, but after making a capture flew leisurely to a fresh perch. Mr. Richardson 
has also sent us several examples from Nicaragua. From Costa Rica it has been 
recorded from several places °, and throughout the State of Panama it would appear to 
be not uncommon ° 7, 
Of the nesting-habits of this species nothing is recorded. In life it is rather an 
apathetic bird, and from its perch on withered branches of the loftiest forest trees it 
takes little notice of the hunter far below, and even when shot at merely turns its head 
to look down for a moment to see what the disturbance was about. Only after several 
ineffectual shots would it shift its position. 
