FAMILY CAPRIMULGIDAE 197 



area of tarsus and toes brown, with the scutes outlined in dull white ; 

 claws slate. 



Measurements. — Males (3 from Veraguas and Bocas del Toro), 

 wing 177-190 (181.6), tail 71.1-77.6 (74.0), oilmen from base 11.0- 

 11.2 (11.1), tarsus 11.0-12.8 (12.1) mm. 



Female (1 from Canal Zone), wing 174, tail 73, culmen from base 

 11.9, tarsus 11.0 mm. 



Resident. Found in small number in forested areas of the Tropical 

 and Subtropical Zones. Recorded on Isla Cebaco, Veraguas ; Las Pal- 

 mitas and Cerro Hoy a (1,200 meters elevation), Los Santos (sight 

 records) ; mouth of Rio Teribe and Cricamola, Bocas del Toro; Juan 

 Mina (sight record) and Salamanca Hydrographic Station, Madden 

 Lake, Canal Zone; Rio Tacarcuna (575 meters), Cerro Mali and 

 Cerro Tacarcuna (1450 meters), Darien (sight records). 



This is a widely distributed species in forested areas in Panama, 

 but little known as it is seen rarely. The first specimen from the 

 Republic was a female taken by John A. Griswold, Jr., on February 21, 

 1936, at the old Salamanca Hydrographic Station on the lower Rio 

 Pequeni, a site now on the shore of the northern end of Madden Lake. 

 The second record, another female, taken by Hasso von Wedel, 

 February 15, 1938, at Cricamola, Bocas del Toro, is in the museum 

 collections at Princeton University. On March 7, 1960, Charles O. 

 Handley, Jr., caught a male in a mist net set for bats at the mouth of 

 the Rio Teribe on the Rio Changuinola, Bocas del Toro. 



Sight records include 2 at Juan Mina, Canal Zone, on January 8, 

 1962, seen by Enrique van Horn flying over the Chagres at dusk 

 among other nighthawks. On January 28 that year I flushed 1 in a 

 forested area on the Rio Guanico, Los Santos. Occasionally, during 

 January and February, Handley saw them flying at dusk over the 

 clearing at his camp at 1,200 meters on Cerro Hoya. In the Serrania 

 del Darien, near the Colombian boundary, in February and March 

 1964, Handley and I saw them at intervals after sunset, crossing the 

 small clearings in which our camps were located on Cerro Mali at 

 1,460 meters, and at 575 meters on the upper Rio Tacarcuna. 



On Isla Cebaco, Veraguas, in 1965, I had better fortune, as on 

 January 13, my second day on the island, our helpers saw a short- 

 tailed nighthawk, resting like any other of its relatives lengthwise of 

 a large branch in a tree standing at the border of the swamp adjacent 

 to our camp at Platanal. Others were seen subsequently at dusk and 

 at dawn, and finally on January 18, George Barrett, Jr., shot another 

 flying over the forested valley of the quebrada. 



