WAYS OF TINAMOU 267 



The usual trill was of this linear cadence : 



The latter was the call which aroused the excited as- 

 cending trill, so it was probably peculiar to one or the other 

 sex. 



It is not remarkable that we are ignorant of which ut- 

 terance characterizes the males, for the breeding habits of 

 these birds are so strange that no transference or assumption 

 of qualities would be surprising in their sex. 



While with most birds the breeding season is confined 

 to a fairly well marked season, with the pileated tinamou, 

 the nesting period seemed interminable. From the begin- 

 ning to the end of our stay the birds never ceased to call, 

 and they apparently nested assiduously throughout the en- 

 tire six months. Unlike the great tinamou which deposits a 

 number of eggs, broods them, cares for the chicks and has 

 done, the pileated deposits but one egg. At the vocal solici- 

 tation of the male, the female approaches ; she deigns to lay 

 her single egg, and then departs, whether to perform the 

 same rite for another male, we do not know. The male takes 

 charge, and it was at this period that I found him on the 

 fifth of May, incubating, in solitude, his single clay-colored 

 egg. There was no nest, the egg being laid on the dead leaf 

 debris in a recently weeded field of rubber. It was quite 

 fresh, measured 40 x 31 mm., and weighed 21 grams. Two 

 eggs have been found in a closely related species in Costa 

 Rica, but hereabouts only a single one was deposited. The 

 handicap of number was compensated by continuity of 

 brood, and barely did one young pileated reach the age of 

 discretion, when another female was summoned and another 

 egg began to fulfill its destiny. One can only wonder; one 

 cannot even theorize as to the why and wherefore of such 



