14 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



Range. — From the llanos of southeastern Colombia, central and 

 eastern Venezuela (Caicara, Bolivar; Cantaura, Anzoategui), British 

 Guiana (Abary, Georgetown), and Surinam (near Paramaribo) 

 through Brazil and Paraguay to northern Argentina (Las Palmas, 

 Chaco; Mocovi, Santa Fe), and Uruguay. 



An adult male that I collected on July 20, 1920, near Las Palmas, 

 Chaco, in northern Argentina, had the iris red ; side of the head and 

 throat deep chrome yellow shading to olive-buff at base of bill ; center 

 of crown dark blue bordered on either side by dark green ; a spot of 

 dull slate blue beneath the nostrils ; rest of bill cream buff ; tarsus 

 cartridge buff, shading to neutral gray on the toes. 



Division of this species into two geographic races necessarily is 

 arbitrary since the measurements on which this is based show a cline 

 from the smaller birds of Central America, northern Colombia, and 

 northwestern Venezuela to the larger birds of the rest of South 

 America. This seems justified, however, by the uniformity found 

 within the limits assigned to each group, with a considerable difference 

 between the smaller birds of the north and the larger ones of South 

 America. 



The yellow-headed vulture was first reported in Colombia by 

 F. Carlos Lehmann (1940, p. 461) under the name Guala de Cabeza 

 Amarillo, Cathartes iirubitinga Pelzeln, with specimens listed from 

 Vaupes and Valle del Cauca. In April 1941, in the Guajira Penin- 

 sula, Dr. Lehmann and I collected specimens of the yellowhead near 

 Maicao (preserved by Lehmann) and later in April and early May, 

 I saw them near Uribia, Nazaret, and Puerto Estrella. Dugand 

 (1941, p. 54) listed additional records, based in part on specimens 

 and observations by Dr. Lehmann that included the birds from 

 Maicao. 



In another account Lehmann (1944, pp. 187-190) gave further 

 details of occurrence that included the presence of these birds at an 

 elevation of 900 meters in the upper valley of the Rio Patia, south of 

 Popayan, a stream that flows through Narifio to the Pacific Ocean, 

 and also reported these birds near Call in the Department of Valle. 

 He noted that they frequented marshy areas and that their main 

 food was fish. In a further paper Dugand (1951, pp. 1-4) noted 

 differences in size and listed the birds as two species under the names 

 burrovianus and urnbitinga. The following year Dugand (1952, 

 pp. 1-4) discussed the question again and treated the two as geo- 

 graphic races of burrovianus. It should be noted that in his account 

 and list of material examined some of the specimens were wrongly 



