256 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA — PART 2 



50.1-53.3 (51.7), tail 29.8-31.9 (31.1), culmen from base 29.6-32.5 

 (31.1) mm. 



Resident. Found locally in the Tropical Zone ; recorded on the 

 Pacific slope from western Chiriqui to western Veraguas, and on the 

 Caribbean side in Bocas del Toro. 



This interesting species has been little known in Panama as few 

 were taken by the early collectors, so far as records show. The first 

 were 2, in the Rothschild collection, taken by H. J. Watson at Bugaba, 

 Chiriqui, October 3 and 27, 1903. The first report of breeding is by 

 Worth (Auk, 1939, p. 307) who, in an account of a nest of a thrush 

 found June 26, 1937, on the Rio Garache, Chiriqui, remarked that one 

 of these hummingbirds "was incubating its two eggs nearby." In a 

 more detailed account later, Worth (Auk, 1942, pp. 367-368) reported 

 that this hummingbird was "very common in banana groves of the 

 Rio Garache region in Chiriqui," a locality about 15 kilometers west of 

 Conception. He described the nest as attached to an inch-wide strip 

 split from an old banana leaf, held in place by downy plant fibers and 

 spider webs that encircled the pendant leaf section. "On this founda- 

 tion the nest cup is erected, rather high (that is close to the midrib). 

 It is large and deep, being very loosely built of rootlets, so that the 

 eggs may be seen through the structure from below. . . . The nest is 

 both secure and waterproof, for it is protected by the main blade 

 of the leaf overhead. . . . The eggs, which are laid in June and July, 

 were invariably two in number, measuring 15x9 and 16x9 mm. in 

 one case." The young were fed by regurgitation in usual hummer 

 fashion. 



Among more recent records, on June 9, 1953, I secured a male in a 

 tract of forest at Zapotillo west of Sona in western Veraguas, the most 

 eastern record yet known. Near Almirante, Bocas del Toro, January 

 20, 1958, I shot a handsome male as it perched over water at the 

 border of a mangrove swamp, and on February 26 collected another 

 above Garay Creek in the same area. Another male taken at Almirante 

 on February 16, 1961, is in the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in 

 Panama. Others in the American Museum of Natural History were 

 collected in this area April 9, 1963, and October 17 and 18, 1965. In 

 February and March 1966 I found aenea fairly common on the 

 northern end of the Burica Peninsula, Chiriqui, where it ranged in low 

 trees and shrubbery bordering old fields toward the seacoast at Olivo, 

 and inland along the Rio San Bartolo, near the Costa Rican boundary. 



While the current treatment of aenea has been to place it as a race 

 of Glancis hirsuta allied to G. h. affinis, after detailed study I believe 



