tg | BANGS — CHIRIQUI BIRDS 17 
as ten perched on the grass-covered plain about me. The 
meadowlark is very common and tame, and its song is very dis- 
tinct from that of Stwrne/la magna. Turkey buzzards and king 
vultures are always to be seen soaring overhead. 
“Upon reaching the foothills, which are covered by a scrubby 
growth of trees, the trail gradually descends into a valley where 
the vegetation is much more luxuriant and where one meets 
again the characteristic birds of the lowland forest,— toucans, 
jacamars, blue tanagers, red-rumped tanagers, and the like, —as 
well as the big black and the red-bellied squirrels. After a grad- 
ual ascent one emerges onto another llano, or plain, like the first 
but higher. Here I saw the pigmy titlark. This attractive little 
fellow was a bird of the trail, running along in front of my horse 
twenty or thirty yards, then taking wing and alighting again, to 
repeat the performance as I came up. 
“ After an hour over this llano the trail descends again to cross 
a shallow stream, which is wooded, and then begins gradually 
rising through a sparsely wooded region to the pueblo de Dolega, 
with its great plantations of cocoa, coffee, sugarcane and bananas, 
at an elevation of about 700 feet. Many species of birds were to 
be seen about the plantations — parrots, hummingbirds, grass- 
quits, red-rumped and blue tanagers being the most conspicuous. 
Beyond Dolega the trail crosses two rivers with wooded banks 
where kingfishers, doves and blue herons were seen. Beyond the 
second river another great llano, gradually ascending, opens out, 
with here and there a patch of scrubby timber and in other places 
covered with blackened rocks — said to be lava from the volcano. 
It affords good pasturage for cattle, but the ride of five hours 
across it is hot and monotonous. 
“On the further side of the llano, at an altitude of 3500 feet, the 
trail leaves the plain and passes through valleys and over hills, in 
a cool luxuriant forest with swiftly running streams and brooks 
rippling among fern-covered rocks. One begins to see an im- 
mense number of birds, all of different species from those of the 
lowlands —water ouzels dart about on the rocks in the foaming, 
rushing streams, small thrushes [Ca¢Aarus| and solitaires are 
singing everywhere in the jungle and the branches overhead are 
