358 BULLETIN 133, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



heavily spotted below and more or less streaked with whitish and 

 buff above. Immature specimens in first winter plumage sometimes 

 have small cinnamon tips on some of the greater coverts. An adult 

 female, taken February 17, is in full molt. The bill, in adult males 

 at least, becomes yellow at the approach of spring, but in yovmg 

 males is dark. Females acquire yellow on part of the lower man- 

 dible, but none were recorded with the bill entirely yellow. An 

 immature male, taken July 10, has the bill fuscous tinged with lighter 

 brown, becoming blacker at the base of the culmen ; iris Hay's brown ; 

 tarsus slate gray. An adult male, killed on the same date, had the 

 bill chamois, slightly darker about the nostril; tarsus light drab. 

 The present species does not have the colored skin about the eye 

 found in T. albicollis, which also differs in having a rufescent wash 

 on the sides. 



These robins frequented thickets and growths of heavy timber 

 where they remained well hidden save when human or other danger- 

 ous intruders were not known to be near. In heavy forest I found 

 them working about deadfalls, or less frequently found a little flock 

 running about on some grass plot where surrounding bushes af- 

 forded a screen that gave them some sense of security. Flocks also 

 gathered to feed on the drupes of fruit-bearing trees, such as Ra- 

 famea laetevirens and others. At the slightest alarm all dived pre- 

 cipitately into the brush and were lost to view. When not afraid 

 they ran about with wings and tail jerking jauntily like common 

 robins, but when startled disappeared with all the furtiveness of 

 the smaller thrushes. Their flight is direct and fairly rapid. 



Specimens from Tapia, Tucuman, appear whiter below than birds 

 from farther east and south. In the series at hand successful divi- 

 sion into geographic races may not be made. 



TURDUS ANTHRACINUS^ Burmeister 



Turdus anthracinus Bxjbmeisteb, Journ. fiir Ornith., 1858, p. 159. (Men- 

 doza. ) 



Semimerula Sclater proposed for this and allied species does not 

 seem sufficiently distinct to merit generic rank.^° As Selby ^^ has 

 designated the European blackbird as the type of Turdus, this name 

 must supplant Planesticus, an observation made first bj^ Dr. C. W. 

 Richmond and recorded by Oberholser.^^ Since Hellmayr^^ has 

 shown that Turdus fuscater d'Orbigny and Lafresnaye, the name 

 previously applied to the species under discussion here, is in reality 

 the large northern bird formerly called gigas, old friends of the 



^ See Ridgway, Birds North and Middle America, vol. 4, 1907, p. 90. 

 « 111. British Orn., vol. 1, pt. 1, Land Birds, 1825, p. xxix. 

 ^ Proc. Biol. Soe. Washington, vol. 34, June 30, 1921, p. 105. 

 ^ Nov. Zool., vol. 28, September, 1921, p. 236. 



