Todd-Carriker : Birds of Santa Marta Region, Colombia. 581 



this heavy forest is reached the avifauna changes abruptly, both in 

 abundance and variety. We stopped at a little farm and travellers' 

 station about six miles beyond Valencia, in the very heart of this 

 magnificent forest, where two days were spent in collecting and ob- 

 serving. This forest belt ends abruptly about three miles west of this 

 point, where low scrub and open woodland alternate with tracts of 

 semi-savanna country. The foothills and mountain slopes become de- 

 cidedly more wooded as we proceed, and there are no bare rock-strewn 

 slopes such as occur farther to the northeast, all land not wooded 

 being covered with savanna grasses, more or less luxuriant. As the 

 trail continues southward, the areas of savanna on the plain become 

 more and more extensive, until they occupy all the space between the 

 small watercourses coming down from the hills. The banks of these 

 little streams are invariably wooded, but this woodland rarely extends 

 out upon the plain. These savannas, however, do not extend down 

 toward the Rio Cesar for more than four or five miles from the edge 

 of the foothills, the region below that being heavily forested, the same 

 as near Valencia. As Camperucho is neared, the savannas become 

 larger and more typical, with true savanna grasses appearing for the 

 first time. At Camperucho the trail swings abruptly around to the 

 northwest, crossing the lower reaches of the foothills of the long 

 southwest spur-range of the Sierra Nevada. Here the country is 

 rolling hills, covered with grasses, with trees in the ravines and little 

 valleys. It was on these typical savannas that we encountered the first 

 Meadowlarks (Sturnclla magna paralios) seen on the trip, while 

 farther north we had seen many individuals of CEdicnemus bistriatus 

 vocifer and Belonopterus cayennensis cayennensis. After crossing the 

 low hills at Camperucho and dropping down on the plain which lies 

 near the Rio Garupal, many small flocks of the large ibis, Theristicus 

 caudatus, were seen scattered over the savanna. 



" After crossing the Rio Garupal the road again goes through 

 broken, hilly savanna country, then drops down into the heavy forest 

 of the western lowlands, which forest continues unbroken, although of 

 varying character, northward to Fundacion. In some places it is of a 

 lower, more open type, with many deciduous trees, giving it slightly 

 the aspect of the so-called ' dry forest,' while in the valley of the Rio 

 Ariguani, and for some distance to the southward, it is very heavy and 



