174 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA PART 3 



that in the black males displays a flash of color from the long, white 

 feathers of the sides and flanks. Regularly I found them in friendly 

 association with the Fulvous Ant-wren (Myrmotheritla fulviventris). 

 Occasionally also they were in low growth with other species that 

 gathered over moving swarms of ants. They were in breeding con- 

 dition from February to May, when males gave low trilling songs. 

 On Barro Colorado Island, where they are common, nests have been 

 recorded in April and May. Goldman on May 2, 1911, collected 

 two eggs, slightly incubated, near Gatun, Canal Zone. His notes 

 describe the nest site as a meter above the ground in the top of a small 

 bush under shelter of a large palm leaf, on a steep hillside in heavy 

 forest. The cup-shaped nest, hung between two forks, was made of 

 fibrous leaf fragments and hairlike vegetable fibers, lined with the 

 latter material. It was about 90 millimeters in diameter with the 

 rather deep cup 50 millimeters across and about the same in depth. 

 The eggs are white, without gloss, heavily marked with rather dull 

 reddish brown, mainly as a broad wreath around the larger end, with 

 a few scattered dots and irregular spots elsewhere. In form they 

 are between subelliptical and oval, one being more rounded at the 

 small end than the other. They measure 18.0x11.8 and 17.3 X 

 12.1 mm. Skutch (Condor, 1946, pp. 21-27) gives size for four 

 eggs as 16.7-17.5 X 12.3-12.7 mm. He found male and female sharing 

 in incubation during the day, with the female alone at night. The 

 newly hatched young "were pink with blackish heads and were devoid 

 of the slightest trace of natal down." Nestlings were fed and 

 brooded by both parents. 



The food, as found in stomachs of those that I have collected, is 

 composed of small insects and spiders. A typical example, taken 

 by E. A. Goldman, June 4, 1912, at Cana on Cerro Pirre, Darien, 

 was filled with remains of spiders and of insects among which I 

 identified a small tenebrionid beetle, eight pentatomid eggs, the jaws 

 of an orthopteran, and bits of two ants. 



As a species Myniiothcntla axillaris has an extensive range from 

 southeastern Honduras south on the Caribbean slope in eastern 

 Nicaragua, eastern Costa Rica, and Panama to Cerro Azul where it 

 shifts to include the Pacific slope also, and continues in South 

 America, from Colombia, Venezuela, and Trinidad, south to Bolivia 

 and southern Brazil. Those from Central America and Colombia 

 east to the lower Magdalena Valley, and south along the Pacific Coast 

 to western Ecuador, in series differ in the female in average darker 

 coloration above, with the rump and upper tail coverts only faintly 

 if at all rufescent. These are the subspecies albigtila. 



