MIRANDOLLE'S FOREST FALCON 



By HERBERT FRIEDMANN 



Curator, Division of Birds 



U. S. National Museum 



(With Two Plates) 



Mirandolle's forest falcon, Micrastur mirandollei (Schlegel), is one 

 of the least known of American hawks in spite of a very extensive 

 range, extending from Costa Rica to Bolivia, and it has long been a 

 rare bird in museum collections. So little material was available for 

 study that in 1932 Griscom (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 72, p. 317) 

 was moved to write of Wedel's eastern Panamanian collection that 

 "a series of five specimens of this very rare Hawk from one locality 

 is unprecedented. . . ." Since that time additional examples have 

 been taken, and in 1941 Griscom and Greenway (Bull. Mus. Comp. 

 Zool., vol. 81, p. 418) separated the birds of the Caribbean coast of 

 extreme eastern Panama under the name M. m. extinms, as they ob- 

 served that two adults from there differed from a single Brazilian 

 adult and from the description of the type from Surinam in having 

 "much narrower and paler tailbands and in having the white under- 

 parts washed with richer buff. Judging by an immature bird and an 

 intermediate specimen also from eastern Panama, the differences de- 

 scribed above have nothing to do with immaturity. ..." Their com- 

 parative material was admittedly inadequate, but, fortunately, their 

 action proves to be correct. 



Through the courtesy of the officials of the American Museum of 

 Natural History, Carnegie Museum, Chicago Natural History Mu- 

 seum, Museum of Comparative Zoology, and the Academy of Nat- 

 ural Sciences of Philadelphia, I have been able to add to the limited 

 material stored in Washington, and have brought together by far the 

 largest and most representative series of this species ever assembled, 

 26 specimens in all. These birds, young and adult of both sexes, 

 clearly substantiate the validity of extimus, as the accompanying fig- 

 ures (pis. I, 2) show, but also indicate that its range is much more 

 extensive than hitherto thought. It is because of the rarity of this 

 hawk that I have felt it worth while to illustrate the races in this paper, 

 as otherwise it would take an equal amount of borrowing for anyone 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS, VOL. Ill, NO. 1 



