52 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA PART 3 



Salvin-Godman collection in the British Museum is labeled Lion Hill 

 Station. Bangs (Proc. New England Zool. Club, vol. 2, 1900, p. 26) 

 recorded male and female taken in March 1900, at Lion Hill by W. 

 W. Brown, Jr. Stone (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1918, p. 

 263) reported a male collected by L. L. Jewel near Gatun, April 14, 

 1911. E. A. Goldman secured one at Tabernilla, Canal Zone, April 

 15, 1911, and one at 600 meters near Cana, Darien, March 14, 1912. 

 W. Lamm saw one on Barro Colorado Island, August 17, 1935. 

 Griscom in the original description of this race listed a male from 

 Perme, San Bias. 



The most western record of this bird is a male that I collected 

 February 24, 1952, at El Uracillo, Code, in the Caribbean lowlands 

 on the headwaters of the Rio Indio. From a thicket bordering a 

 small field our attention was attracted by a clear, ringing trill, that 

 finally my companion and I traced to one of these birds resting on a 

 tall palm stub that rose to the level of the leaf crown of the 

 surrounding trees. The bird, partly hidden in a slight depression in 

 the top of the stub, repeated its song at intervals of a minute or two, 

 with the tips of the two halves of the long, curved bill slightly 

 separated. The gonads were in breeding stage. During preparation 

 of the specimen I noted that the dorsal pteryla was only slightly 

 expanded in the center of the back and that it continued uniformly 

 without a break to the base of the tail. 



A field note by E. A. Goldman regarding the male that he collected 

 at Tabernilla records that the bird gave a chirping call as it climbed 

 the tree trunk. 



In February 1957 I found this scythebill at Mandinga in western 

 San Bias. One taken February 1 as it climbed up small tree trunks 

 in second growth (rastrojo) had the stomach filled with slender- 

 bodied white beetle larvae, from 18 to 25 mm long, with a few 

 fragments of adult beetles. The female taken here in forest tapped 

 the bark steadily as it climbed upward on a tree trunk. Two were 

 seen in company on the following day at the edge of forest. 



The stomach of the female collected by Goldman at Cana held the 

 broken fragments of a small scorpion, including the sting at the 

 end of the tail, and parts of two or more roaches, as well as bits of 

 their egg cases. 



T. K. Salmon (in Sclater and Salvin, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 

 1879, p. 524) near Remedios, Antioquia, Colombia, found a nest 

 of this species "inside a decayed tree, which had been cut off about 

 three feet from the ground, and become hollow to the roots, so that 



