94 MEMOIRS OF THE XUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



and from San Diego de los Banos. He had only five examples altogether 

 for examination. I have had the good fortune to collect over twenty in the 

 overgrown pastures between Aguada de Pasajeros and Rodas, and I could 

 have procured a fair few more about Trinidad and along the south coast of 

 Camaguey, for I saw quite a number. This form has the appearance of a 

 large Flicker with no black crescent on the chest, rather dingier in color 

 but similar in habits. 



i68. Priotelus temnurus temnurus (Temminck). 

 Cuban Trogon; Tocoloro or Toroloco. 



While agriculture has robbed most of the central part of the Island 

 of its glory of forest and glade, and replaced the woods with wide reaches 

 of green cane, rippling rhythmically in the brisk trades, still here and there 

 bits of woodland persist. The monotony of the cane fields is broken by 

 the stupendous ceibas which no one dares to cut, for "an image of the Virgin 

 is outlined on the bark" under each great bossed spine, and then there are 

 the groves of stately royal palms, so useful for thatching and for feeding 

 pigs with their fruit, palmiche, that no one wishes to cut them down. These 

 wide fields do not attract the Trogons whose haunts are narrowing year by 

 year. Still on the abrupt sierras of limestone and in the lowland thickets 

 which grow on ground not worth the clearing, the noonday quiet is broken 

 by the Trogon's persistent monotone, repeated over and over again. 

 Motionless it sits, upright, for often an hour or more, and then, with tail 

 expanded, it launches forth, poises fluttering before some cluster of fruit 

 or insect-haunted flower and offers for a second a sight gorgeous enough to 

 thrill the coldest and most unkindly critic of the tropics. The call, which 

 has been likened to the word tocoloro or toroloco, gives the Cuban Trogon 

 its local name. 



The three or four white eggs are laid in an old Woodpecker's hole, and 

 how the parents enter and emerge from such a nesting-place without 

 completely divesting themseh'es of plumage is a complete mystery. No 

 bird is more difficult to skin, for the feathers fall no matter how carefully 

 handled. 



The green Trogon, with its rose-pink belly, can never be mistaken 

 for any other bird. 



The Isle of Pines race, vt^scus Bangs and Zappey, is tenable but not 

 especially well defined. 



