332 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I50 



we saw two in forest along the Rio Chiman near the mouth of the 

 Rio Corotu. And on March 13 and 14 we secured specimens on the 

 Cerro Chucanti, where they were found to elevations of 500 meters. 

 In Darien Barbour and Brooks, in April 1922, collected 7, including 

 2 downy young, on Cerro Sapo, and Galindo secured two on Cerro 

 Mali, a female at La Laguna at 1100 meters June 10, 1963, and a 

 male on Cerro Mali at 1450 meters June 7, 1963. Goldman shot one 

 April 18, and another May 3, 1912 at 1400 meters on Cerro Pirre. I 

 saw one at Boca de Paya on the Rio Tuira on March 13, 1959. 



In the Caribbean drainage Griswold (Proc. New England Zool, 

 Club, vol. 15, 1936, p. 101) recorded them on the Rio Pequeni above 

 the old Salamanca Hydrographic Station. Goldman shot a male on 

 June 7, 1911, at 600 meters on Cerro Bruja, and at Mandinga, in the 

 Comarca de San Bias, Florentino, a native hunter, shot one for me 

 in the forest immediately back of our little house. I saw another 

 near here on February 14. H. von Wedel collected a series at Puerto 

 Obaldia and Perme in 1930. 



In addition to the specimen records W. M. Perrygo on March 

 21, 1951, flushed several in heavy forest on Cerro Campana. 



These birds range in the same forests as the larger marbled wood 

 quail. Perhaps because of their smaller size they seem often to hide, 

 even when near at hand, rather than fly or run, and because of this 

 habit they may be more common than the few observations that have 

 been published indicate. In the heavy cover that they frequent it is 

 only by chance that I have come onto them so directly as to cause 

 them to fly. Near the mouth of the Paya early one morning one 

 flushed near the border of a small clearing and flew so swiftly that 

 it was in the cover of the bordering woodland before I could bring 

 my gun around, the only time that I have seen one in the open. In 

 their forest cover sometimes they run aside for a meter or two and 

 sometimes fly for a few meters above the undergrowth, and then 

 with set wings scale down again to the ground. 



The claws of this species are quite small for birds of this family, 

 indication that it may not share the scratching habit common in the 

 related genus Odontophorus. 



The typical subspecies has been found rarely north on the Caribbean 

 slope of Costa Rica (recorded from Villa Quesada). It is more 

 frequent in northwestern Colombia in Cordoba, northern Antioquia 

 (Taraza) and southern Bolivar (Volador). A much darker race R. 

 c. australis Chapman is found on the Pacific slope in the Province of 

 Choco. An adult female from Cerro Pirre is somewhat intermediate 



