356 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I50 



light olive-brown, the wing coverts barred narrowly with white ; pri- 

 maries and secondaries fuscous on inner webs, light olive-brown on 

 outer webs; throat, upper foreneck, and center of abdomen pure 

 white; sides, flanks, rump, and upper and under tail coverts barred 

 narrowly with black and white ; tail olive-brown. 



Immature birds are said to lack the brown band on the hindneck. 



Downy young are not known. 



Iris crimson; eyelids clay color; under part of mandible neutral 

 gray; rest of bill dull green; tarsus and toes umber brown; claws 

 dark neutral gray. 



Measurements. — Males (2 from Honduras and Nicaragua), wing 

 72, 72.1 ; culmen from base 16.5, 17.2 ; tarsus 22, 26.8 mm. 



Females (2 from Isla Coiba and Colombia), wing 74.2, 74.7; 

 culmen from base 16.8, 17.4 ; tarsus 24.8, 24.8 mm. 



Resident. Very rare ; Puerto Obaldia, San Bias ; Isla Coiba. 



The only records for the Republic are of an adult female brought 

 to me alive by a convict on Isla Coiba on January 28, 1956, and of 

 another female, an immature bird, also caught alive in the partly dry 

 channel that passes through the village of Puerto Obaldia, San Bias 

 on March 14, 1963. The one first mentioned was captured when 

 men cleared a tract of marshy ground near the Catival work camp 

 at the Rio San Juan, back of Bahia Damas on the eastern side of the 

 island. The second was taken following similar clearing operations 

 in the coconut groves bordering the village of Puerto Obaldia. 



In the latter part of 1961 Mrs. Ricardo Marciaq of Panama 

 purchased one of these rails alive in the city market but was not 

 able to ascertain where it had been captured. It is probable that it 

 came from Panama, but this is not certain, since live birds are 

 brought in rather regularly from Colombia. In February 1962 I 

 saw this bird in the collections of living animals at Summit Gardens 

 in the Canal Zone, where it was confined in a small aviary. It showed 

 a trace of albinism in a few scattered feathers over the body. 



The species is widely distributed in tropical America but is one 

 that is little known. To the north it has been found in southern 

 Honduras on the Rio Segovia and in southeastern Nicaragua on 

 the Rio Escondido. In South America it is recorded from northern 

 Colombia, Venezuela, and Trinidad to Ecuador and northern Brazil. 



Belcher and Smooker (Ibis, 1935, p. 284) describe a nest found 

 on the Caroni marshes, Trinidad, as "globular, with a large side 

 entrance-hole ; it was built of dry coarse grass-blades and weed-stems, 

 and set near the root in the center of a stool of sugar-cane. The 

 three eggs * * * are rather long ovals, smooth-shelled, and with a 



