76 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 134 
It has long been my opinion that the southern house wrens are 
better songsters than their representatives in the United States, as 
their songs include fewer harsh, rattling sounds, and the bird on 
Coiba definitely excells its mainland relatives. Their rolling, trilling 
notes were pleasing to the highest degree, and as they sang regularly 
their music was a constant delight to me, both in my morning ex- 
cursions afield, and in the afternoons when I was occupied in our 
quarters. The birds truly merited their name of ruisefior, borrowed 
from the nightingale, famous for its song in Spain. The wrens were 
nesting at this season, and well-grown fledglings were brought to me 
on January 26. 
With the considerable increase in information in recent years on 
house wrens as a group there is no longer reason or value for the 
separation of the southern races under the specific name musculus, 
since there is no clear-cut character that distinguishes these birds 
from those of farther north. The darker coloration of the Coiba 
population was noticeable at once when I first encountered the birds 
in life. The description of this race follows. 
TROGLODYTES AEDON CARYCHROUS subsp. nov. 
Characters.—Similar to Troglodytes aedon intermedius Cabanis,?? 
but darker, brighter brown; bill much larger and heavier. 
Description—Type, U.S.N.M. No. 461091, male, Isla Coiba, 
Panama, collected Jan. 21, 1956, by A. Wetmore (orig. No. 20373) : 
Crown Prout’s brown, the centers of the feathers dusky neutral 
gray, forming irregular dark spots; hindneck and back bister, the 
feathers with faint concealed bars of dark neutral gray; rump and 
upper tail coverts russet; lesser and middle wing coverts Prout’s 
brown, with partly concealed bases dark neutral gray; greater wing 
coverts and outer webs of secondaries russet, barred with dusky 
neutral gray; primaries dull black, barred narrowly on outer webs 
with clay color; tail Mars brown, becoming Verona brown on the 
outer rectrices, barred narrowly and irregularly with dull black; lores 
pinkish buff, the feathers with very faint tippings of Saccardo’s 
umber ; circlet of feathers around edges of eyelids pinkish buff; an 
indistinct superciliary, more plainly indicated behind the eye, dull 
cinnamon-buff, bordered below, behind the eye, by a line of bister; 
rest of side of head dull pinkish buff, with the feathers tipped and 
edged narrowly with bister; throat, upper foreneck, and abdomen 
22 Troglodytes intermedius Cabanis, Journ. fiir Orn., vol. 8, 1860 (May 30, 
1861), p. 407. (San José, Costa Rica.) 
