46 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA PART 2 



"Veragua, 1875." Further, one in our collection from Sona was 

 purchased from the Rev. H. Th. Heyde. It is without date, but other 

 skins from this locality that came from the same collector were 

 taken in March and April 1888. The bird seems to have disappeared 

 in this region with the destruction of the forests. I have found no 

 other record of it on the Pacific side west of the Canal Zone. There, 

 it is common in suitable cover around Balboa and Ancon, and I have 

 examined specimens taken by collectors of the Malaria Control Ser- 

 vice at Cocoli, and near the settlement of Santa Clara on the Nuevo 

 Emperador Road. 



This, the most widely distributed form of the species in Panama, 

 while not rare is decidedly less numerous in its forest haunts than is 

 the white-fronted dove in its more open coverts. The abundance of 

 Cassin's dove usually is indicated by the calls of the males, as the 

 birds themselves remain under cover. Where they are not hunted they 

 are tame, and when approached merely walk aside on the jungle floor. 

 They tend to flush quickly with rattling wings, but drop to the ground 

 again after a short flight, or alight to rest quietly on some low perch. 

 Around our jungle camps during quiet afternoons they have come to 

 drink from little streams. In uninhabited areas often they are inquisi- 

 tive, as I have had them walk toward me with nodding head and 

 spreading tail. One taken by Goldman at Cana had the stomach well 

 filled with small seeds, mixed with vegetable fibers and fragments of 

 a roach. 



The cooing call of the males is like that of the white-fronted dove, 

 but is somewhat less resonant, and usually a trifle less prolonged. 

 Nests are reported from January to September. The normal set is of 

 2 eggs. One nest, in forest near Chilar, in western Colon, March 8, 

 1952, was a fairly substantial platform of small twigs, lined with softer 

 plant stems. The central depression, of sufficient depth for safety, held 

 a recently hatched young bird, covered sparingly with dull cinnamon- 

 brown down, and an egg near hatching. The egg was white with a 

 slight gloss. Hallinan (Auk, 1924, pp. 310-311) described a nest 

 found near Gatun, May 4, 1909, placed about 2 meters from the 

 ground on a limb of a shrub, partly supported by vines. The white 

 egg measured "1.19X.86 inches," or 30.2x21.8 mm. Stone (Proc. 

 Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, vol. 70, 1918, p. 243) gives the size of 

 an egg collected by L. L. Jewel, near Gatun, as 1.15x0.83 inches, 

 which equals 29.2 X 21 .0 mm. 



The first specimens known of this dove, taken on the Rio Truando 

 in the lower Atrato Basin, were confused with Leptotila verreauxi. 



