lOO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I50 



set to dark they range out to feed, and I have often recorded them 

 by their harsh calls as, hidden by the darkened sky, they flew past my 

 camp. The note is an explosive quok, heronlike in sound, but suffi- 

 ciently different from others of the family to identify the species. 



It is probable that the colony on Isla Villa v^^as on its nesting 

 ground. I believed also that those seen in March 1957, in company 

 v\^ith boat-billed herons, on the lower Rio Caldera, back of Punta Mala 

 were nesting, and there must be colonies in the swamps at La Jagua 

 from the numbers that are found there. Nests seen on San Jose Rock, 

 off Naos Island, March 21, 1915, attributed questionably to this spe- 

 cies (Hallinan, 1924, p. 308) from the locality more probably were 

 those of the yellow-crowned night heron. The eggs are similar to 

 those of that species. In Darien this species has the same name as 

 the yellowcrown, hurafia, because of its secretive habits. Near Pacora 

 they were called chala, of uncertain meaning but possibly derived 

 from the greenish-black back, in form like a dark-colored chal, or 

 kerchief, often worn by women across the shoulders. 



NYCTANASSA VIOLACEA (Linnaeus): Yellow-crowned Night Heron; 



Hurafia 



Crown and a streak under eye white, with rest of side of head and 

 throat black ; gray underneath in adult ; bill strong and heavy. 



Description. — Length 510 to 610 mm. Adult, gray, heavily streaked 

 with black above, and indistinctly with whitish on abdomen ; side of 

 head and throat black; crown, including the 100 to 150 mm. long 

 nuchal plumes, and streak on the side of head, white. 



Immature, brownish gray above and on neck ; spotted with buffy 

 white on back and wings ; heavily streaked with buffy white on neck ; 

 whiter below, heavily streaked with brownish gray, including the 

 throat and abdomen. 



The adult has long dorsal plumes extending beyond the tail that 

 are lacking in the black-crowned night heron. There are differences 

 in the skeleton that serve to maintain the two in separate genera. 



The httrana is found mainly in swampy woodlands in the lowlands, 

 including the taller stands of mangroves, on both sides of the isthmus, 

 and in addition is spread widely through the islands in the Gulf of 

 Panama. It also reaches Isla Coiba. While the yellowcrown ranges 

 along the larger streams, the majority do not go inland much beyond 

 the head of tidewater, since this is the usual limit of the wet forest 

 that is their haunt. Within these areas they are fairly common, though 

 it is impracticable to judge their number accurately because of dififi- 



