142 Rhoads, Birds of the Paramo of Central Ecuador. LApril 



fiction." It was with some such feehng as this that my companion, 

 Mr. R. S. Lemmon and myself saw our camp outfit lashed to the 

 back of an Indian pony in the barnyard of Hacienda Rosario on 

 one of the few really decent Ecuadorian days of last May. We 

 had come up from Quito, six miles distant, about two weeks before 

 and had here made the southern foothills of Mount Pichincha our 

 happy hunting grounds. Thanks to the kind offices of that veteran 

 naturalist and Consul of Quito, Ludovic Soderstrom, and to the 

 liberality of Mrs. Espinosa, the wife of its owner, we had been 

 enjoying glorious days at Rosario and were rewarded by many 

 a choice skin of the Hummingbirds, Wood Wrens, Flycatchers, 

 richly colored Cotingas, Tanagers and what-nots which flourished 

 there. But as yet we had only caught mere glimpses of the his- 

 toric old crater, 4000 feet above us, which has stood muffled guard 

 so many centuries, over the ancient citadel of the Incas. It was 

 completely cut off from our "Casa" view by the broad shoulder 

 of forest-covered rocks and the gorges above the farm-house. Our 

 rambles rarely took us far enough to see around that shoulder 

 and then only to be confronted by the mocking vapors which ever 

 half reveal and half conceal the upper world of Ecuador in the 

 rainy season. 



It was the first day of May when we struck out into the wooded 

 mountain trail above Rosario's hamlet, followed by our Indian 

 and his sure-footed pony, and, selecting the cattle paths of the 

 nearest quebrada, we made short-cuts for the Paramo. In about 

 two hours we began to see more daylight and some fine scenery, 

 and at 12,000 feet, the tussock-grass began as it were to reach down 

 its finger-tips into the forbidden grounds of the rapidly dw^arfing 

 tree growths. Bushes briefly held sway among these and even 

 up here the brilliant hued red and black Tanagers and Violet-ear 

 and Pufl^-leg Hummers had ventured to fly upon the heels of the 

 sub-arctic Finches and such Formicarian and Dendrocolaptean 

 species (pardon the technicality) as had been more specially fitted 

 for what we might call a grazing, as contrasted with an arboreal, 

 life. As soon as we reach the long grass and low bushes, a sturdy 

 Finch, Phrygilus unicolor (D'Orb.) of bluish slate color, almost 

 as large as our Fox Sparrow, flushes, flies ahead and drops into the 

 grass. Another, of the same size, brownish and streaked, alights 



