FAMILY PICIDAE 565 



beetles taken from the trunks and branches of trees. They come 

 regularly to berry-laden trees, eat the tassels of the guarumo 

 (Cecropia) trees, and were regular visitors to the ripe bananas and 

 plantains that Dr. Skutch placed on his feeding stands for birds. 

 In the hill region of El General, southwestern Costa Rica, he found 

 them nesting from the end of March to June. Males and females 

 at night slept together in old nesting holes, or in newer ones as soon 

 as these had been dug to sufficient depth. When eggs were laid they 

 alternated in covering them during the day, and at night both slept 

 in the nest, in contrast to most other species of woodpeckers of this 

 tropical area in which the male incubates alone at night. As the 

 young hatch the pair continues this habit, and after the family is on 

 the wing all return to the nest at dusk to spend the night in company. 

 This may continue until the approach of the next nesting season. 

 The birds rear one family each year, late nests apparently being 

 those where the first setting of eggs has been lost. He recorded a 

 predominance of males among them, as in 6 broods he noted 13 males 

 and only 3 females. Details of egg size are not yet known. Near 

 El Volcan, Chiriqui on March 16, 1955, I found a mated pair at a 

 nest hole, apparently completed, 10 meters from the ground in a dead 

 stub at the border of a pasture. 



The species ranges beyond Panama in southwestern Costa Rica 

 to the Gulf of Nicoya. Peters (Check-list Birds World, vol. 6, 

 1948, p. 166) and other writers recently have listed Centurus pulcher 

 (Sclater) of northern Colombia as a subspecies of chrysauchen, but 

 after careful study this does not seem warranted. A series of 11 

 specimens of that bird collected by M. A. Carriker, Jr., in Antioquia, 

 Bolivar, and Santander, differ in the male in having the entire crown 

 except the narrow forehead red with only a scant trace of yellow 

 at the base of the nape, instead of the extensive yellow of the fore- 

 crown, occiput, and entire nape of chrysauchen. On the lower 

 surface in both male and female the black and white barring extends 

 to the upper center of the breast, forming a cross band well forward 

 of the central area of red. In pulcher this pattern is restricted to 

 the lower breast, and terminates barely above the upper end of the 

 red. In the female pulcher the entire crown is black and the nape red 

 with only a line of yellow below, while in female chrysauchen the 

 black is confined to the narrow central area with most of the fore- 

 crown and all of the nape yellow without red. The two undoubtedly 

 are allied but differ so definitely, and are so widely separated geo- 

 graphically, that they appear specifically distinct. 



