FAMILY PHASIANIDAE 325 



ODONTOPHORUS ERYTHROPS MELANOTIS Salvin: Rufous-breasted Wood 

 Quail; Gallito del Monte Pechicastano 



Odontophorus melanotis Salvin, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, pt. 3, 1864 (Feb., 



1865), p. 586, (Tucurrique, Costa Rica.) 

 Odontophorus melanotis coloratus Griscom, Amer. Mus. Nov. no, 280, Sept. 10, 



1927, p. 3. (Guaval, Rio Calovevora, northern Veraguas.) 



A forest quail with chestnut-brown breast and sides. 



Description. — Length, 220-260 mm, Male, crown chestnut-brown, 

 with the longer crest feathers tipped or washed with fuscous-black; 

 hindneck and upper back dull black to brownish black, mottled finely 

 with dull buff or cinnamon-buff; lower back, rump, and upper tail 

 coverts browner, also mottled, and with indistinct spots and broken 

 bars of black; wing coverts and scapulars dark grayish brown, 

 mottled lightly and spotted irregularly, with black, and lined with 

 cream-buff, the scapulars with heavy cross bands of black; flight 

 feathers fuscous; outer webs of primaries with irregular bars of 

 cinnamon; outer webs of secondaries with heavier, mottled bars of 

 mixed grayish buff and cinnamon-buff; tail dull cinnamon-brown, 

 mottled and barred indistinctly with dull black ; sides of head, throat, 

 and sides and front of neck dull black, with a faintly indicated band 

 of chestnut on the side of the head; breast and sides cinnamon- 

 brown, merging with the black of the throat through an over wash 

 of chestnut, the hidden centers of the feathers of the sides mottled 

 finely with black; feathers of the abdomen fluffy, blackish basally, 

 tipped with cinnamon-buff; tibia, flanks, and under tail coverts dull 

 black, barred and tipped with cinnamon-buff. 



Female, without black on the throat or sides of the head. 



Chick, chestnut-brown above, dark cinnamon to cinnamon-buff 

 below. The bird molts immediately into a plumage that resembles that 

 of the adult but has the crest feathers duller, and the back with 

 prominent white to buffy white lines. Below it is heavily spotted and 

 barred with black. 



Birds taken at Cricamola have the iris in a male marked as dark 

 red brown, and in a female as coffee brown. The feet in both are 

 said to be blue black ; bare skin around eye purplish in male, bluish 

 black in female ; bill black ; tarsus and toes blue-black. 



Measurements. — Males (6 from Panama) wing 138.8-147.8 

 (143.3), tail 42.7-59.6 (51.7), culmen from cere 18.1-20.0 (18.9), 

 tarsus 42,6-47.0 (45,9) mm. 



