8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



Remarks. — The blacker body color, darker brown edgings on the 

 wing coverts, and the head markings in life, where the dull red (plain 

 in the three northern subspecies) is variegated by cross lines of 

 yellow to whitish or greenish yellow across the back of the crown 

 and the hindneck, with addition of an ivory-colored area in the center 

 of the crown, readily identify this distinct race. I became familiar 

 with the differences in plumage markings in my first observations of 

 these turkey vultures in the field in South America, but it was not 

 until April 1940 that I noted the interesting colors on the head in 

 a bird taken in the foothills of the Serrania Macuire in the Guajira 

 Peninsula, northeastern Colombia. My first report outside South 

 America was of an immature individual shot in 1944 on Isla San 

 Jose in the Gulf of Panama, which I identified by plumage characters 

 as ruficollis. At the time I believed that this bird was a wanderer 

 from breeding grounds in Colombia. As further field work made me 

 familiar with these vultures in Panama, additional records have 

 served to establish ruficollis as the breeding form across the isthmus 

 on the Pacific slope from Darien on the Colombian border to the 

 western province of Chiriqui, where I have recorded it within a few 

 miles of the Costa Rican boundary. On the Caribbean side I have 

 identified it from the Chagres Valley at Gamboa and Juan Mina in 

 the Canal Zone, and in the San Bias from Mandinga, Armila, and 

 Puerto Obaldia. The resident form to the west through the provinces 

 of Colon and Bocas del Toro on this slope remains to be established. 



There seems little doubt that ruficollis will be found in Costa Rica, 

 and it may range beyond far to the north on the Pacific slope. While 

 there are no specimens to prove this, van Rossem (1946, pp. 180-181) 

 has reported the head color in two male turkey vultures that he shot 

 on March 14, 1946, but did not preserve, on Isla Lechuguia (also 

 called Isla de los Burros) off Topolobampo, northern Sinaloa, as 

 follows: "Head, neck, cere (including encirclement of nostrils), 

 about 'Carmine' or 'Eugenia Red' ; extreme lower bare portion of 

 neck at juncture with feather line yellowish orange, the color mostly 

 concealed and obvious only on examination ; transverse corrugations 

 across crown between eyes and small tubercles on preocular region, 

 ivory white; transverse corrugations of hind crown, nape, and sides 

 of head grayish blue (about 'Deep Green-blue Gray')." Van Rossem 

 explains that "not having a color chart at the time, the color terms 

 in quotes are an approximation based on field notes." With this in 

 mind, it is evident that the description is similar to the condition 

 found in Cathartes a. ruficollis. The measurements that van Rossem 



