l82 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, I50 



HELICOLESTES HAMATUS (Temminck): Slender-billed Kite; 

 Gavilan Piquidelgado 



Figure 38 



Falco hatnatus Temminck, Nouv. Rec. Planch. Col., livr. 11, June 1821, pi. 61. 

 (Para, Brazil.) 



Generally similar to the Everglade kite, but wings less pointed; 

 tail short and without white ; bill and claws slender, much curved. 



Description. — Length 380 to 410 mm. Adult, dark gray throughout, 

 becoming blackish on head and neck. 



Immature, somewhat paler gray, with wing coverts, secondaries, 

 and upper tail coverts tipped narrowly with brown, buff or white ; 

 webs of remiges barred narrowly on the lower surface with white and 

 light gray ; under tail coverts tipped and barred with white or buffy 

 white ; tail sooty black, tipped and barred with white. 



The female listed beyond, collected February 24, 1959, had the eye 

 bright golden-yellow ; base of mandible, gape, cere, and bare skin in 

 front of eye, reddish orange; margin of eyelid dusky neutral gray, 

 bordered, adjacent to the feathering, by a narrow line of reddish 

 orange; base of gonys dull yellowish buff; rest of bill black; tarsus 

 and toes reddish orange ; claws black. 



Measurements. — Male (1 from Darien), wing 265, tail 113.0, cul- 

 men from cere 25.5, tarsus 50.8 mm. 



Females (5 from Darien, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil), wing 

 272-285 (279), tail 120,4-132,4 (129,2), culmen from cere 26,7- 

 27.7 (27,3), tarsus 46,0-51,0 (48,8) mm. 



Resident, Rare; recorded only in the Tuira Valley, Darien, near 

 the mouth of the Rio Paya, 



This is a little known species of tropical South America, known 

 in Panama only from the Paya region of Darien, On February 24, 

 1959, I found one, a female perched over a shaded pool in a forest 

 quebrada, near the point where the small stream came down a bed 

 broken by rock exposures into the Rio Tuira. The bird flew a short 

 distance to another perch, where it continued to give a low mewing 

 call of a single note. It ranged at intermediate levels, well below the 

 heavy tree crown of the high forest. There were numerous shells of 

 the apple snail {Pomacea zeteki Morrison) scattered about along the 

 sandy shore of the quebrada, which I assumed the kite had shared 

 with the limpkins that ranged in the same area. Later I received 

 another of these kites that had been taken in 1958 in this same sec- 

 tion by collectors for the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory. These are 

 the first reports of the species outside South America (see Wetmore, 

 Smithsonian Misc, Coll,, vol. 145, no, 1, 1962, p. 11). 



