98 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I50 



230 mm. long. In breeding season the breast, hindneck, and under 

 surface of the wings are Hght cream-buff. 



Immature, paler gray above, so that the bird appears white above 

 and below ; nuchal plumes shorter. 



Iris yellow ; bare space around eye and lores light blue ; bill bluish 

 neutral gray, somewhat darker at base, and yellowish white at tip; 

 tarsi and toes bluish neutral gray ; claws darker. 



Measurements. — Males (6 from Panama and northern Colombia), 

 wing 267-280 (271), tail 96.0-103.5 (99.1), culmen from base 75.8- 

 81.7 (79.7), tarsus 92.6-98.7 (96.0) mm. 



Females (5 from Panama and northern Colombia), wing 263-274 

 (269), tail 95.5-101.4 (98.5), culmen from base 76.0-93.0 (82.1), 

 tarsus 92.1-94.8 (93.5) mm. 



Resident. Rare ; now found mainly in Darien. 



Lawrence (Ann. Lye. Nat. Hist. New York, 1861, p. 301) received 

 one from McLeannan that is listed as taken on the Atlantic slope of 

 the Canal Zone. Collectors for the Malaria Control Service secured 

 an adult female in the Tocumen swamps, east of Panama City, on 

 October 6, 1953 ; and there is a male in the Havemeyer Collection, 

 in the Peabody Museum at Yale, taken at San Antonio, on the lower 

 Rio Bayano, February 23, 1927. Other records are from Darien, 

 mainly on the Rio Chucunaque, except for one bird collected April 6, 

 1922, on the Rio Jesus, a tributary of the Sambii (Bangs and Barbour, 

 Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 65, 1922, p. 193). The anthropologist 

 J. L. Baer secured 3 near the mouth of the Rio Tuquesa, on the Rio 

 Chucunaque, March 4 and 5, 1924. In this same region I saw several 

 between March 21 and April 1, 1959, and secured 2 specimens on 

 March 22. One early morning as I moved rapidly on the river in a 

 motor-powered piragua one scrambled up the steep river bank and 

 disappeared in the brush. A few days later I saw one feeding at a 

 heavily shaded forest pool, where it posed with outstretched neck, a 

 strikingly beautiful bird. 



Two immature individuals were brought to me, caught alive by 

 country men, who described them as tame and unafraid. In these the 

 tarsi were not quite fully formed, and the primaries were still in 

 growth, so that it is interesting to note that they have the color pattern 

 of adults, including slender nuchal plumes, these being 90 mm. long in 

 one and 115 mm. in the other. The back and wings are paler gray, 

 and the forepart of the body is plain white, without the buff found in 

 breeding adults. 



Schomburgk (Fauna Flora Brit. Guiana, 1848, p. 754) says that the 



