504 IT. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



and widespread winter visitants from Guatemala to Panama, on both 

 sides of the Cordillera. During the winter months it resides at 

 altitudes ranging from sea-level up to 8,500 feet, but is most abundant 

 in the lower and warmer regions. It frequents both the treetops of 

 the heavy forest and the scattered trees of shady pastures, plantations, 

 and orchards. The spreading willows that grow along the water- 

 courses in the Caribbean lowlands of Guatemala and Honduras, 

 seeming so exotic amid the heavy foliage of the majority of the trees, 

 are very attractive to the summer tanagers, which dart actively 

 through their open crowns. 



"Throughout the six months of their sojourn in Central America, 

 the summer tanagers are solitary and unsociable. They never form 

 flocks; and when two are close together, attentive watching will 

 usually reveal that they are quarreling, probably over territorial 

 rights; for it seems that these tanagers, like some of the warblers, 

 claim exclusive feeding territories while in their winter homes. Early 

 in the afternoon of October 13, 1944, soon after the arrival of the spe- 

 cies in this locality of southern Costa Rica, I found two individuals in 

 a guava tree behind the house. Both wore the yellowish plumage of 

 the female and the young male; on neither could I detect any red. 

 One sang sweetly in a low voice, repeating its lilting melody over and 

 over as it flitted about the second, who moved less frequently and 

 from time to time uttered a low, liquid monosyllable. They con- 

 tinued this for many minutes. Then they flew into the tall hedge at 

 the back of the yard, thence through the yard from tree to tree, then 

 down into the lower pasture, and across it to the bank of the creek. 

 I lost sight of them for a few minutes, but soon the song led me to 

 them once more, in some trees in the midst of the pasture. I watched 

 them for the better part of an hour ; and all this time they continued to 

 behave as already described: one (I believe always the same), singing 

 in a sweet, low voice; the other uttering the liquid note; the two 

 flitting around each other. Rarely one would fly at the other and 

 make it retreat. Finally they flew up into the forest and I lost sight 

 of them. Were these summer tanagers, a young male and a female, 

 contesting the same winter territory? This seems the most probable 

 explanation of the episode I witnessed." 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — Central and east-central United States south through 

 Mexico and Central America to Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. 



Breeding range. — The summer tanager breeds from central 

 Texas (San Angelo), central Oklahoma (Fort Cobb, Ponca City), 

 eastern Kansas (Geary region), southeastern Nebraska (Falls City), 



