DICKCISSEL 187 



several birds in various parts of the pasture, not far apart, would be 

 chanting at once. 



"By mid-March the males had practically completed the prenuptial 

 molt. Each had a bright yellow breast and belly, and on the throat 

 a heavy black patch that on some individuals extended well down- 

 ward into the yellow of the breast, with perhaps a few detached 

 black feathers below the termination of the solid black giilar patch. 



"The flight of the dickcissels is rapid, with frequent abrupt shifts 

 in direction. In their winter home they travel in compact, quick- 

 moving flocks of a few or many together, which wheel and turn in 

 characteristic fashion. No other small Costa Rican bird that I know, 

 whether resident or migratory, flies in flocks so large and compact, 

 which rise so high and turn so quickly; parrots may travel in even 

 larger flocks, but there is little likelihood of confusing these relatively 

 big and noisy bu'ds with the small and nearly silent dickcissels; nor 

 are the straggling, slow-moving flocks of migrating kingbirds, more 

 constant in direction, likely to be mistaken for them. I believe that 

 I can recognize a flock of dickcissels while they are so far distant 

 that they appear as mere motes against the sky. 



"On April 3, 1939, I saw the last of these dickcissels in the vicinity 

 of my cabin. The following year, at a point a few miles higher up 

 the valley, I saw a lone dickcissel, singing in flight, on April 23. By 

 the end of the month they have disappeared from Costa Rica, but 

 the last stragglers have been recorded in Guatemala as late as May 4. 



'•'In the Caribbean lowlands, the status of the dickcissel as a winter 

 resident is somewhat doubtful. In the vicinity of Tela, Honduras, 

 Peters (1929) first met dickcissels on March 29, when he saw two 

 perching on a fence wire beside a railroad track over which for the 

 preceding 2 months he had been accustomed to pass six times a day. 

 They were not seen again. Near Los Amates, in the Caribbean 

 lowlands of Guatemala, I did not meet the dickcissel until March 28, 

 1932, more than a month after I began fieldwork in that region. 

 These dickcissels were in a clump of tall timber bamboos close beside 

 the Rio Morja, in company vnih numerous blue gi'osbeaks; and both 

 kinds of finches appeared to be eating the pollen of the bamboo 

 flowers. Some of the male dickcissels in this flock seemed to have 

 completed the prenuptial molt, but others were still in transitional 

 plumage. Although I continued to study birds on this same planta- 

 tion for the next 3 months, I did not again meet dickcissels, thus 

 strengthening my belief that in this region they were only transients. 



"Early dates of faU arrival in Central America are: Guatemala — 

 passim, August 26 (Griscom). Costa Rica— Basin of El General, 

 September 8, 1942, September 12, 1943, and September 24, 1945; 

 Buenos Aires de Osa, September 4 (Carriker). 



