^66 BIRDS FEOM MARGARITA— EOBINSON. vol.xviii. 



like our flickers, and begin slowly on a low key and ran up crescendo, 

 increasing the rapidity and pitch of the note. They nest in a hole 

 constructed in the large nests of the white-bodied and chestnutdieaded 

 wood lice which are common in the trees along the stream. 



[A x)air in the collection hardly differ from a specimen from Vene- 

 zuela, but are very slightly paler on the throat. — C. W. R.] 



Family PICID.E. 



41. MELANERPES SUBELEGANS (Bonaparte). 

 BONAPARTE'S WOODPECKER. 



Native name ''carpintero." 



Abundant. Their nests near El Valle were usually constructed in 

 cocoa palms. On July 9 at El Valle a child brought in to me a young- 

 bird barely able to fly, 



[The proper name for the present bird is without doubt .If. subelegans 

 of Bonaparte, although some ornithologists, principally the English, 

 have for a long time relegated this name to the synonymy of MeJanerpcs 

 aurifroiis (Wagler), probably following Sclater, who seems to have 

 been the first to make the mistake. 



This form was first described by Bonaparte^ under the name Ceniurus 

 snheJegans. He compared his bird Avith the G. cJegaiis of Swainson, 

 and gave the locality as "Mexico.'' In 1850, in his " Conspectus," he 

 again described it in almost the same words, but corrected the locality 

 to ''A^enezuela." Here he quoted as refeiences his original description 

 and 'Hricolor! Gr. 1849, ex Wagl. 1829." In the first description he 

 neglected to mention the color of the abdomen, but did so in the 

 second, giving it as red. In describing G. subelegans he writes, "fronte 

 et cervice subauratis," and in a comparison which follows says it 

 "resembles Mr. Swaiuson's Genturus elegans^ but is well distinguished 

 by wanting the very conspicuous black superciliary spot and by the 

 much less brilliant gold color of the crown." This agrees very well in 

 the mam with the bird now under consideration, but M. aiiri/rons 

 (Wagler), with which this description is made to fit by those who reject 

 the name subelegans, is a much larger bird, and with the golden color 

 of the nape fully as brilliant, if not even more so. It has a yellow 

 belly, while subelegans (as shown in his second description) has a red 

 belly. If he had been comparing M. auri/rons with M. elegans in the 

 original description of G. subeleg((ns, he would probably have mentioned 

 the great difference iu size, as he did iu comparing his G. santa-crusi 

 with P. auri/rons [=rubrii-entris] a few pages over in the same paper.^ 



ISTow, there is a discrepancy in his description of subelegans, when 

 applied to the present bird, for he says " fronte et cervice subauratis;" 

 the bird long known as G. tricolor has the forehead yellow, but the nape 



1 Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1837, 109. 

 2proc. Zool. Soc, 1837, p. 116. 



