320 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I50 



recent record for the Canal Zone area was on January 14, 1961, when, 

 as I landed from a cayuco on the forested bank of the Chagres at 

 Guayabalito, above Juan Mina, a pair ran off across the forest floor. 

 To the eastward in forested regions the birds remain fairly common, 

 as they still find shelter on steep hill slopes that have not yet come 

 under cultivation. I have noted them in such locations in numerous 

 localities from above Chepo and Chiman eastward through Darien, 

 and at Mandinga on the San Bias coast. 



M. A. Carriker, Jr., collecting for the U. S. National Museum in 

 Colombia at Unguia, northern Choco on March 2, 1950, flushed a 

 female from a nest at the foot of a large tree in the forest. There 

 was one egg. This is oval, glossy white, with a very faint buffy tint, 

 and measures 36.0x26.7 mm. Another egg, taken from the oviduct 

 of a female shot at the Hacienda Belen, in northeastern Antioquia, 

 Colombia, March 24, 1948, is also oval, but is pure white without 

 gloss (owing probably to a shell deposit still incomplete). It measures 

 36.3x27.7 mm. This description and the dimensions correspond to 

 those given by Oates (Cat. Eggs Brit. Mus., vol. 1, 1901, p. 69) for 

 2 eggs collected by Salmon at Remedios, Antioquia. Schonwetter 

 (Handb. Ool., pt. 4, 1961, p. 224) says that occasionally eggs of 

 this form are finely spotted, or more rarely heavily marked with 

 brown. He gives the measurements of 6 as 35-38.6x27.0-28.0 mm. 



Four-fifths of the contents of the stomach and crop of one taken 

 at Cana consisted of the broken fragments of starchy seeds, with a 

 few harder ones that may have helped in grinding the others. In 

 addition there were remains of a dozen or more millipeds, 6 ants, 2 

 roaches, a spider, and bits of beetles and beetle larvae. 



In any series of these birds there is much range in marking from 

 those very dark to others much lighter, and from those definitely 

 barred to others that show finely marbled markings, but these appear 

 to be purely individual variations. Our series of 21 from Panama 

 and 28 from northern Colombia, most of them recently taken, con- 

 firms the final conclusions of Chapman (Amer. Mus. Nov. no. 380, 

 1929, p. 5) and Griscom (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 72, 1932, pp. 

 319-320), based on older material, that the bird of Panama must be 

 recorded under the name marmoratus described by Gould from a 

 Bogota trade skin. This subspecies, therefore, has a range extend- 

 ing from central Panama across northern Colombia (through the 

 lower valleys of the Atrato, Simi, Cauca, and Magdalena Rivers), 

 and along the eastern base of the eastern Andes, into northwestern 

 Venezuela. 



