FAMILY RAMPHASTIDAE 513 



given rapidly and excitedly. Their food is mainly berries and fruits 

 so that they come to feeding trees in company with other species. 



At night the small companies in which they range by day sleep in 

 cavities in trees, sometimes in those that seem of a size too small to 

 accommodate them comfortably. Because of this habit the tip of the 

 long tail usually is broken or frayed, except when the feathers are 

 newly grown. Van Tyne (Univ. Michigan Mus. Zool. Misc. Publ. 19, 

 1929, p. 20) on Barro Colorado Island found 3 or 4 of these small 

 toucans using a woodpecker hole about 5 meters from the ground 

 in a dead tree for a dormitory. As each one entered it folded the long 

 tail flat against the back. Skutch (Condor, 1958, pp. 201-207) made 

 similar observations, but in this instance the toucans were sleeping in 

 a hole in a dead tree standing in the water near the shore of the 

 island. He found another dormitory used by 6 birds in a horizontal 

 limb of a huge forest tree 30 meters from the ground. Here the 

 entrance hole was on the underside of the limb. Later these quarters 

 were used for a nest with 1 bird as an occupant. Detailed examination 

 was impracticable due to the height of the tree. But later, when the 

 eggs had hatched he recorded 4 and 5 adults bringing food to the 

 young, and also sleeping in the cavity. From final observations it 

 was believed that 3 young were produced in this nest, which would 

 indicate that one pair had served as parents, with the others bringing 

 food as helpers. The young when small were fed on insects. Later 

 they were given fruits of several kinds, some of them of fair size. 

 Pits and other remains were removed from the nest cavity, as a mea- 

 sure of sanitation. 



A record by Van Tyne (Univ. Michigan Mus. Zool. Misc. Publ. 27, 

 1935, p. 25) of nesting in the slightly smaller but otherwise closely 

 similar subspecies Pteroglossus torquatus erythrosonus Ridgway of 

 the Yucatan Peninsula and Peten provides further data in this species. 

 A nest, found by Van Tyne's companion Adolph Murie at Uaxactun, 

 in northern Peten, was in a hole about 13 meters above the ground 

 in a large limb of a tree standing at the border of a clearing. Three 

 white eggs lay on a "mass of fruit pits" in the bottom of the cavity 

 which was about half a meter deep. The eggs "measured 30 by 24 mm., 

 29.5 by 23 mm., and 28 by 22.5 mm." As they were heavily incubated 

 they could not be saved. 



Throughout Panama the species is known as the pichilingo, some- 

 times shortened to pichilin. 



Through oversight Salvin and Godman (Biol. Centr.-Amer., Aves, 

 vol. 2, 1896, p. 556) included David, Chiriqui, in the range of Ptero- 



