208 BULLETIN 15 5, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the adjacent back feathers are that color which is found in no other 

 dove of the island. 



Abbott shot a pair of these quail-doves at an elevation of 900 

 meters near Hondo, west of Constanza on May 3, and 5, 1919, a 

 locality not far from Las Canitas where Beck secured specimens. 

 Abbott records them as not common and writes that he killed a 

 young individual near Constanza but that it was too badly shot to 

 skin. On March 13, 1922, he collected a female at an elevation of 

 1,200 meters on Loma del Cielo in the Sierra de Bahoruco about two 

 miles east of Polo, Province of Barahona. He was told also by an 

 officer of the Guardia of a curious pigeon near Cabo Isabella on the 

 north coast but was not certain that it was the present species. 



On May 17, 1927, as Wetmore ascended the trail to El Rio, at the 

 summit of the steep mountain slope above the crossing of the Rio 

 Jimenoa below Jarabacoa one of these beautiful doves flew across the 

 path directly in front of his mule. Another was seen at dusk 

 directly above the settlement of El Rio. The flight was swift and 

 direct, and on the wing the neck appeared very short. On the 

 morning of May 25, above Constanza, in heavy rain-forest where 

 slender palms thrust their heads toward the light amid denser 

 growth he heard a strange call, certainly a pigeon but one not 

 familiar, that began as a low hoot hoot hoot repeated with great 

 rapidity and audible for only a few yards and changed suddenly to 

 a hollow, resonant coo that came to the ear in slow, throbbing beats 

 often for the space of a minute, a sound that carried for a long 

 distance through the dripping verdure. Creeping slowly through 

 little openings between the trees, hampered always by the entangling 

 strands of the climbing bamboo he finally looked down a steep slope 

 into a space where for a few yards the ground was free of under- 

 growth beneath a little group of palms to obtain a brief glimpse of 

 one of these quail-doves as it walked quickly aside into cover. A 

 quick shot through the dense growth had no other effect than to 

 place a load of shot pellets in the trunks of intervening trees, and 

 half an hour later from the trail above he heard the strange, 

 cadenced beat of the call from the same spot as before. On the 

 following day very early in the morning the bird was again calling 

 but took alarm before it was seen and a wait in a blind for an hour 

 and a half gave no result. On May 27, another prolonged wait was 

 fruitless, but on returning toward the trail a quail-dove that possibly 

 had been watching the hunter flushed with a great rustling of wings, 

 to alight twenty-five feet from the ground in a tree, where an instant 

 later it was secured. It was truly a wonderful bird that well repaid 

 the long tramps afoot over execrable trails in the faint light of 



