312 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA — PART 3 



PIPRA CORONATA VELUTINA Berlepsch 



Pipra vchitina Berlepsch, Ibis, ser. 5, vol. 1, no. 4, October 1883, p. 492. 

 ("Veragua" = western Chiriqui, Panama.) 



Characters. — Slightly larger ; male, less solidly black ; female 

 slightly lighter green. 



A female collected February 25, 1966, at Punta Balsa, Chiriqui, 

 at the lower end of the Burica Peninsula, had the iris dark reddish 

 brown ; maxilla black ; mandible bluish neutral gray ; tarsus, toes, 

 and claws dusky neutral gray. 



Measurements. — Males (10 from Chiriqui and Costa Rica), wing 

 59.4-63.8 (61.6). tail 24.4-27.7 (26.3), culmen from base 9.^11.3 

 (10.4), tarsus 13.5-14.4 (14.0) mm. 



Females (10 from Chiriqui and Costa Rica), wing 58.7-62.8 

 (60.4), tail 24.9-27.7 (26.4), culmen from base 9.9-11.5 (10.9), 

 tarsus 12.6-14.6 (13.6) mm. 



Resident. Locally in western Chiriqui and western Bocas del Toro. 



The western subspecies is little known in Panama. Arce sent 

 specimens to Salvin from Bugaba in western Chiriqui. W. W. 

 Brown, Jr., found it in numbers at Divala, from October to December 

 1900, and collected 18 specimens. Apparently it now is rare in that 

 area, as in my own field work I found it only on three occasions. I 

 collected a female, March 2, I960, in a small tract of woodland on 

 the Rio Gariche. 15 kilometers west of Concepcion ; on February 25, 

 1966, another in undergrowth at Punta Balsa, 5 kilometers north of 

 Punta Burica ; and March 12, 1966, a third at Olivo, north of Puerto 

 Armuelles. In western Bocas del Toro Peters (Bull. Mus. Comp. 

 Zool., vol. 71, 1931, p. 327) recorded male and female from Crica- 

 mola, taken by von Wedel, August 19 and 21, 1928. 



Skutch (Pac. Coast Avif., no. 35, 1969, pp. 97-109) has found 

 several males grouped near one another in undergrowth in court- 

 ship assemblies. The individuals range 25 meters or so apart, each 

 with its own display area 5 to 10 meters in diameter. Here they 

 spend much of their time calling and singing as they rest on small, 

 horizontal branches, 3 or 4 meters above the ground. Occasionally one 

 flits his wings or makes short flights to other perches. Periodically 

 he drops down in the undergrowth where he flies back and forth 

 irregularly, finally stopping on a special low perch "where with de- 

 pressed head and beating wings he emits a harsh, grating note." Here 

 the female comes and mates. 



The nest, built by the female alone, is a shallow cup made of light- 

 colored fibers, attached by the rim in a small fork, from half a 

 meter to 2 meters above the ground. Tufts of dead leaves and green 



