BIRDS OF ARGENTINA, PARAGUAY, URUGUAY, AND CHILE 43 



or two complete and a series of skulls. Fishermen there told me 

 that it was frequent to find these birds along the beaches in winter 

 and apparently there is heavy mortality among them. The pajaro 

 nino, as the penguin is called, was also reported as frequent on the 

 eastern coast of the Province of Buenos Aires. 



Order COLYMBIFORMES 

 Family COLYMBIDAE 



COLYMBUS DOMINICUS BRACHYRHYNCHUS Chapman 



Volymbus dominiciis brachyrhynchus Chapman Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. 

 Hist, vol. 12, Dec. 23, 1899, p. 255. (Chapada, Matto Grosso, Brazil.) 



On August 9, 1920, near the Riacho Pilaga, 10 miles northwest of 

 Kilometer 182, Formosa, Argentina, I found two of these grebes 

 swimming slowly across the open water of a rush-bordered lagoon. 

 At the time I was navigating a crude balsa made of a bundle of 

 cattails bound together on which I knelt and paddled with a small 

 pole. With this unwieldy craft I managed to approach near enough 

 to secure one of the grebes, but the other dived and was lost in 

 the rushes. 



In the specimen taken the wing measures 102 mm. and the culmen 

 21.5 mm., so that in size this bird agrees with the measurements 

 given by Chapman in his original diagnosis of the subspecies hrachy- 

 rhynchus. It is also slightly darker below than C. d. hrachypterus 

 Chapman. The present specimen, when compared with a con- 

 siderable series of hrachypterus^ has the sides of the breast grayer, 

 and the band across the upper breast lighter in color. 



Colynibus doTninicus differs from C. chilensis, the other common 

 small grebe of this region, in having the outer webs of the inner 

 primaries and the secondaries margined, at least near the tip, with 

 dull gray, while the scutes on the tarsus and middle toe are broader 

 and less numerous. In dominicus the large scutes on the front of 

 the tarsus number from 12 to 14, and those on the basal joint of the 

 middle toes from 11 to 12, a total of from 23 to 26 in the combined 

 spaces. In C. chilensis there are from 15 to 17 scutes on the front of 

 the tarsus, and 14 to 17 on the basal segment of the middle toe, a 

 total of from 30 to 34. 



Should the small grebe from southern South America prove 

 separable from northern examples, the name Podiceps speciosus 

 Felix Lynch Arribalzaga,^" based on a specimen in winter plumage 

 taken in May, 1873, on Baradero Island, Province of Buenos Aires, 

 is available. La Ley, a large folio sheet, was a daily paper, pub- 

 lished for a short period only, under the editorship of Senor Enrique 



^ La Ley, Buenos Aires, July 2, 1877, p. 1. 



