346 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA PART 3 



growth on the ground, a circular or elhptical space from 30 to 70 

 centimeters across (smaller than those of Manacus vitellinus). These 

 are kept clean of leaves and other loose material through the mating 

 season. The display is accompanied by calls, chee-yu, whirring and 

 abrupt snapping sounds made by the wings, and active movements 

 among the upright stems of the shrubbery around and above the 

 court. Females come to mate, then build their nests, incubate, and 

 rear the young without assistance from the males. 



Nests may be located in forest or second growth in or near pastures 

 and fields, cofifee plantations, or shrubbery near houses, usually not 

 far above the ground. Bits of cobweb and caterpillar silk are stretched 

 to form a support on the twigs of a small crotch. There the female 

 assembles fine strips of bark, rootlets, heads of grasses, and other 

 similar materials to form a shallow cup. Usually the materials chosen 

 are light in color, only rarely dark. The two eggs are "pale gray 

 or pale blue-gray, heavily mottled with shades of brown. On some 

 eggs the dark marks are rather uniformly distributed over the whole 

 surface ; on others, they are concentrated in a wreath around the 

 large end ... or the middle, leaving the two poles only lightly pig- 

 mented." Measurements of 55 varied from 21.4x14.3 to 23.0X 

 15.9 mm. Nestlings have scanty gray down, with the interior of the 

 mouth yellow as in other smaller species of the family. 



Food is taken from insects and various species of berries. Skutch 

 has found these manakins capturing fleeing insects above raiding ant 

 columns, in company with the various species of ant-birds. 



SCHIFFORNIS TURDINUS (Wied) : Thrushlike Manakin, 

 Saltarin Paralauta 



Muscicapa turdina Wied, Beitr. Naturg. Brasilien, vol. 3, pt. 2, 1831, p. 817. 

 (Bahia, Brazil.) 



Medium size ; dull brown to olive-brown above ; in the more com- 

 mon pattern of coloration, grayish olive underneath, with a rusty 

 brown band across the breast. 



Description. — Length 145-165 mm. Adult male, upper surface dull 

 reddish brown to olive-brown ; wings and outer webs of rectrices 

 dull cinnamon-brown ; foreneck and upper breast pale dull cinnamon- 

 brown, the throat paler ; lower breast and abdomen light olive-gray to 

 dull olive-brown. 



Adult female, similar, but usually somewhat duller. 



Juvenile, upper surface rather dull reddish brown, brighter on the 



