CHERRIE: ORNITHOLOGY OF THE ORINOCO REGION. 2/7 



While the characters separating H ' . c. canadcnsis and H. c. trinitatis 

 are not great, nevertheless they seem to me sufficiently constant for one 

 to be justified in recognizing trinitatis as a subspecific form. In a series 

 of sixteen females from Trinidad, the Caura River, middle and lower 

 Orinoco regions, not one has the crown as light as in two specimens 

 from Cayenne. In the Cayenne birds the crown is almost clear russet, 

 while in the others the average is nearer a chestnut. The under parts of 

 specimens (females) from Trinidad, Caura River and Orinoco delta, 

 average decidedly more buffy, or better perhaps buffy clay coior, the 

 wash of the color extending over the entire under parts including the 

 centre of the abdomen. 



Birds from the middle Orinoco, from Ciudad Bolivar, and beyond, 

 are intermediate in general color between the Cayenne birds and those 

 from Trinidad, the- Orinoco delta, and Caura River points, being as a 

 series, at once distinguishable by their paler coloring both above and 

 below. This pale coloring is perhaps more marked in the females, but is 

 very evident in the males also when compared as a series. So character- 

 istic does this paler form seem of the middle Orinoco region that I 

 would designate it as 



HYPOLOPHUS CANADENSIS INTERMEDIUS subsp. nov. 1 

 The nesting season on the middle Orinoco is evidently a long 

 one, as I have found young birds in the nest in June, and fresh eggs in 

 September. The nest is a thin walled, rather loosely, though neatly 

 woven cup, suspended between the forks of a horizontal twig. Nesting 

 sites are similar to those of our Red-eyed Vireo. Two eggs collected 

 September 4, 1898, at Santa Barbara (near the mouth of the river 

 Carcunaparo, or sometimes called the Sinaruco) were "short ovate in 

 form, glossy white, covered with frequent red-brown spots, in color 

 and measured 21 x 16 and 20.5 x 16 mm 2 ." 



A male in juvenal plumage, that cannot have been long out of 

 the nest, taken at Caicara, June 15, 1907, closely resembles the adult 

 female above and below, but there are no mesial blackish streaks on the 

 breast. 



Another example, a male in transitional plumage from the juvenal 

 stage to that of the adult, is similar below to the adult female, and above 

 differs from the adult only in having the crown parti-colored, a few 



*Type in collection of Brooklyn Institute Museum No. 3674. <? ad Caicara. Orinoco Rivor. Vener., 

 May 9, 1905 (No. 13669, Cherrie collection). 



'Berlepsch & Hartert, Novit. Zool. IX. 1902. p. 70. 



