306 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 150 



quite tame. It is usual to find several in company, and where they 

 are common a flock may contain ten or a dozen birds. 



The notes of this bird are a series of vi^histling, squeaking calls 

 interspersed with harsher chattering sounds, usually uttered rapidly 

 as though the bird was much excited. These notes have limited 

 carrying power, and in this, as well as in sound, they are quite 

 different from the loud calls of the related species Ortalis vetula to 

 the north and O. ruficrissa in Colombia, which may be heard easily 

 at a distance of a kilometer. The account by Beebe (Book of Bays, 

 1942, p. 268) of a bird call heard on board a yacht anchored in 

 Bahia Honda that he attributed to the faisana must refer to some 

 other kind. 



The species of this genus, as a group, build flimsy nests of twigs, 

 grass, and weed stems, usually with a lining of a few green leaves, 

 in low trees. The usual set of eggs is three. They are dull white, 

 with a distinctly roughened shell that often shows many pits. Measure- 

 ments for a series of 10 by Skutch (Wilson Bull., 1963, p. 265) 

 show the following range: 55.6-61.9x38.1-42.5 mm. (As the locality 

 for Skutch's observations is stated to be the Terraba valley in south- 

 western Costa Rica it is presumed that these are of the subspecies 

 Ortalis c. cinereiceps.) 



The trachea in the male has the form usual in the genus, in which 

 it passes down the front of the neck to the furculum, makes a loop 

 down the right side of the body between the skin and the pectoral 

 muscles, and then returns to enter the thorax, where it divides in 

 the usual manner in two bronchi that lead to the lungs. In an 

 immature male, barely grown, taken at Almirante on January 20, 

 1958, the loop had formed only far enough to fill the fork of the 

 furculum. In another older bird, taken at Mandinga on February 

 5, 1957, the loop extended halfway down the length of the pectoral 

 muscle, and in a bird that appeared to be fully adult, from near the 

 mouth of the Rio Pacora April 3, 1949, the trachea reached to the 

 point of the keel on the sternum. 



While this species has been treated regularly as conspecific with 

 Ortalis garrula, a bird with chestnut head and upper neck, found in 

 northern Colombia from near the Rio Sinu east to the western base 

 of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta information now available 

 indicates that it is distinct. De Schauensee in connection with his 

 description of the race chocoensis (Not. Nat. no. 221, 1950, pp. 2-3) 

 listed two females from Tierra Alta, Cordoba, one with the rufous 

 head of typical garrula, and the other with the gray head of the race 

 mira, which he interpreted as evidence of intergradation at that 



