32 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 134 
areas. Usually from one to a dozen were seen daily, teetering ahead 
of me, or flying with quick, short wingbeats low over the water. 
At high tide, when much of their normal feeding ground on the 
beaches was under water, I saw them perched on the gunwales or 
prows of boats anchored in the bay, or on logs and rocks above the 
water, where they rested quietly with none of the nervous body move- 
ments that normally draw attention to them. At the convict camps 
located near the shore, they came familiarly along the paths and 
about the houses in search of food. 
NUMENIUS PHAEOPUS HUDSONICUS Latham: Whimbrel, 
Zarapito Trinador 
Numenius hudsonicus LAtHAM, Index ornithologicus, vol. 2, 1790, p. 712. (Hud- 
son Bay.) 
These large curlews were scattered along the beaches everywhere, 
regardless of whether the surface was the edge of a rocky reef, or a 
smooth stretch of sand. As they are hunted to a certain extent, they 
were rather wild, flying out ahead of me with the loud calls that give 
them their Spanish name of trinador. Occasionally I found one in the 
marshy open pastureland at Baja Espafia, near the mouth of the 
Rio Catival, but the shore, even among the mangroves, was the 
normal habitat. 
Family STERCORARIIDAE: Skuas, Jaegers 
CATHARACTA SKUA CHILENSIS (Bonaparte): Skua, Salteador Grande 
Stercorarius antarcticus b. chilensis BONAPARTE, Conspectus generum avium, 
vol. 2, 1857, p. 207. (Chile.) 
On the return trip to Balboa on February 6 I recorded between 
15 and 20 skuas at sea between Punta Mala and the area where the 
islands of Otoque and Bona were barely in sight to the north. All 
were flying low above the water among the terns and other sea birds. 
None were recorded on January 6 when I crossed these same waters 
on the voyage to Coiba. 
While these records, like my earlier observations of skuas in the 
Gulf of Panama in 1944, are placed under the subspecies chilensis 
on the basis of probability, it must be noted that no specimens have 
been taken as yet in these waters. One or two seen near at hand 
seemed to show the characters of chilensis, so far as could be told 
without the bird in hand. I was interested, however, to have a brief, 
distant view of one that appeared very light in color. 
