FAMILY DENDROCOLAPTIDAE 35 



surface dull bufify brown, with lower foreneck, breast, and sides 

 streaked heavily with bufify white or cinnamon-bufif, bordered nar- 

 rowly with black, these markings becoming fainter on lower breast 

 and abdomen. 



Immature (marked by the black mandible), darker, more olive 

 than adults. 



This is the most common member of its family, found widely 

 throughout the lowlands wherever there is tree growth, from the 

 dense forests of Bocas del Toro and Darien, to the lines of trees 

 that border streams and the landward edge of mangrove swamps 

 in the savanna areas. In ascending the slopes of the mountains they 

 are found regularly to 300 meters, but above are less common. Near 

 El Valle and on Cerro Pirre a few range to 600 meters elevation. 

 While usually found alone, individuals may travel with the groups 

 of small birds that range in company through the forest, and oc- 

 casionally join the other gatherings that forage over the traveling 

 ant swarms. Once, on the Rio Tuira in Darien, I saw one in com- 

 pany with another individual of the same genus, but of another 

 species, Xiphorhynchiis lachrymosus, the two moving about near 

 one another. 



Usually these woodcreepers are tame, and often show considerable 

 curiosity, as when I have been moving quietly through the under- 

 growth it has been common to have one fly down to peer at me near 

 at hand. In feeding they climb from near the ground up the tree 

 trunks to the higher branches in the leaf crown. Like woodpeckers 

 they cling with sharp claws, the stififened tail braced against the 

 bark, and hitch slowly up the vertical trunks and along inclined 

 limbs. They pass easily along the underside of horizontal branches, 

 and frequently remain for some time back down in such locations. 

 With the strong bill they search in crevices, probe in moss and 

 epiphytes, and occasionally with a quick blow knock ofif a flake of 

 bark. Their movement in search is nearly always upward. While 

 they do not hammer as steadily as do woodpeckers, they use the bill 

 as a pick sufificiently so that the older appellation of "wood-hewer" 

 was not a misnomer. Their food is taken from the miscellaneous 

 insects encountered. Stomachs that I have examined have held 

 Tenebrionids, Cerambycids, Elaterids, and Curculionids among 

 beetles, roach egg cases, cicadas, earwigs, skins of caterpillars, and. 

 in one, bits of a small lizard. 



Their call is a rapid repetition of a note that rises in pitch and 

 then falls, a laughing sound usually given behind cover with the 



