BIRDS FROM BRAZIL AND SOUTHERN VENEZUELA—FRIEDMANN 491 
GYMNODERUS FOETIDUS (Linnaeus): Bare-necked Grackle 
Gracula foetida LinNAEvs, Systema naturae, ed. 10, vol. 1, 1758, p. 108 (“‘America, 
Rolander’=Surinam, ex Berlepsch and Hartert, Nov. Zool., vol. 9, 1902, 
p. 58). 
SPECIMEN COLLECTED 
1 ad. @, Venezuela, San Antonio, Upper Orinoco, March 4, 1931. 
The single specimen collected is in an interesting plumage that 
indicates that the fully adult plumage may take two or more years to 
acquire. Although considered as adult by the collectors, our specimen 
has very little of the silvery gray in the wings ordinarily considered 
characteristic of the adult male. In fact, this pale tone is restricted 
to external margins of the outermost five secondaries, where it is 
mottled with dusky earth brown, and to the tips of the feathers, 
where it is almost whitish, and to a few of the median upper 
primary coverts. The rest of the wings are dull black, the bird 
resembling the female more than the male, but differing from the 
female in having what gray it does have on the wings. The only 
explanation I can even guess at is that it is a bird in its second year 
and that the fully adult plumage is not acquired until the next year. 
It is also smaller than a male from the Amazon River and another 
from Elvira, eastern Peru. The wing lengths are—the Venezuelan 
bird 205; Amazon River bird 217, Peruvian bird 222 mm. 
RUPICOLA RUPICOLA (Linnaeus): Cock-of-the-rock 
Pipra rupicola LINNAEUS, Systema naturae, ed. 12, vol. 1, 1766, p. 338 (based on 
“Rupicola” Brisson; “Surinam et toute la Guyani’’; French Guiana, Hellmayr, 
Catalogue of the birds of the Americas, pt. 6, 1929, p. 242). 
SPECIMENS COLLECTED 
4 ad. o, 3 ad. 9, Brazil, Serra Imeri, near Salto do Hud, Venezuelan border, 
November 28-December 8, 1930. 
1 ad. 9, Venezuela, Cerro Guanari, Brazo Casiquiare, February 4, 1931. 
4 ad. 6, 3ad. 9, Venezuela, Cerro Yapacana, Upper Orinoco, March 22-April 
18, 1931. 
The birds collected at Serra Imeri, Brazil, in November and Decem- 
ber were in breeding condition. 
The cock-of-the-rock is a bird of wide but spotty, local distribution. 
Hellmayr (op. cit., pp. 242-243) writes that it occurs in “mountain 
ranges of French, Dutch, and British Guiana, southern Venezuela 
_. , and northern Brazil...” Itisa bird of the lower slopes only, 
a truly tropical species. Its preference for hilly country is more @ 
preference for rocky cliffs and slopes than for altitude. 
Holt (Nat. Geogr. Mag., Nov. 1933, pp. 621-622) writes as follows 
of his observations of this splendid bird: “Tt is a shy bird and has 
chosen for its haunts the occasional isolated hills and the lower 
mountain slopes of the Guiana highlands—a region little disturbed by 
