Todd-Carriker : Birds of Santa Marta Region, Colombia. 145 



Gurney was the first author to extend the range of this little kite to 

 Colombia, stating that there was a specimen from Santa Marta in the 

 collection of the Norwich Museum. It was not detected by Dr. Chap- 

 man in any other section of that country, and doubtless this is about 

 its normal western limit. It is the most abundant of its family in the 

 lowlands contiguous to Santa Marta, where a good series were taken 

 and many more seen. In its haunts and habits it is much like the 

 Sparrow Hawk, keeping to the more open woodland and cultivated 

 lands. 



29. Harpagus bidentatus (Latham). 



Seven specimens: Cautilito, Las Vegas, Mamatoco, La Tigrera, and 

 Pueblo Viejo. 



A study of this series, in connection with other Colombian material 

 in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History, seems 

 to confirm in the main the conclusions reached by Gurney (Ibis, 1881, 

 120-123) regarding the sequence of plumages in this species. After 

 leaving the spotted-breasted, brown-backed stage the bird assumes a 

 dress in which the under parts are rich hazel, almost " solid " in some 

 cases, barred posteriorly with whitish and dusky in others. This in 

 turn gives way to a stage in which the under parts from the breast 

 downwards (except the crissum) are more or less regularly barred 

 with hazel, white, and slaty gray. This is the case with No. 41,921, 

 La Tigrera, which agrees well with No. 107,726, Collection American 

 Museum of Natural History, Los Cisneros, Colombia, and No. 132,992 

 (same collection), Dabeiba, Colombia. A small series from British, 

 Dutch, and French Guiana are not nearly so distinctly barred under- 

 neath ; in fact, most of the specimens are practically unicolor below. 

 If it could be shown that Guiana birds never became so distinctly 

 barred as those from Colombia the latter would constitute an excellent 

 subspecies, but inspection of a much larger series would be requisite 

 before such a separation would be justified. 



Still more recently Mr. H. Kirke Swann (Synoptical List of the Accipitres, 

 iii, 1920, 104) has described a third new form, meridensis, from Venezuela. 

 This is based mainly on a supposed difference in the color of the sides of the 

 breast and flanks, which is " pure white in Bahia birds," but " chestnut rufous " 

 in those from Venezuela. This would of course be a good character if it were 

 constant, but in our series of twenty specimens from Venezuela and Colombia 

 all stages of gradation in color are in evidence. 



