Todd-Carriker : Birds of Santa Marta Region, Colombia. 29 



mountains to the Indian village of Pueblo Viejo. The trail from 

 Dibulla extends along a wide sandy beach for about ten miles, now 

 and then passing through shady groves of beach-plum, and then enters 

 open woods, where the branches of many of the trees are fringed with 

 small ferns, with orchids, and Spanish moss. Here jacamars, motmots, 

 and hummingbirds were observed, and howling monkeys were heard in 

 the distance. After fording a river we emerged upon a grassy 

 savanna, in some places marshy and in others grown up to palms; 

 there was a stretch of about three miles through this kind of country, 

 which is a favorite place for the jaguar. The trail then enters the 

 typical tropical forest, dark and cool. We pass under beautiful tree- 

 ferns, some of them fifteen feet high, with wonderful crowns of wide- 

 spreading fronds; and under alligator-pear and mahogany trees, the 

 pack-animals halting now and then to pick up the fruit of the former, 

 of which they are very fond. They know enough to spit out the large 

 black stones instead of swallowing them. On account of the danger- 

 ous mountain trails, with red clay in steep places and along the 

 precipices, the Indians use oxen for pack-animals, since being cloven- 

 hoofed they do not slip so readily. In many places in this forest the 

 trail was barred by immense trees, blown down by a recent storm, the 

 branches of which were adorned with beautiful orchids of many colors, 

 pinks and yellows predominating, some of them doubtless rare species. 

 It was while cutting a trail with our machetes around one of these 

 trees (which sometimes required two or three hours) that I first saw 

 the beautiful white-tailed hummingbird which Mr. Bangs described as 

 a new species [Leucuria phalerata].^ A peculiar thing about this 

 dark, gloomy tropical forest is that one does not see or hear many 

 birds while travelling through with a pack-train. To find birds in 

 such a forest requires patience and plenty of time. In this forest live 

 immense boa-constrictors, which seek their prey on the tops of the 

 high wooded ridges. 



" On the fourth day after leaving Dibulla we reached Pueblo 

 Viejo, in the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and were pleas- 



8 Almost certainly this was an error in identification. I have never seen 

 this species below 4,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada proper, and 5,000 feet is 

 its extreme lower limit on the San Lorenzo. What Mr. Brown saw in this 

 case was most likely Florisuga mellivora, which is fairly common in the region 

 which he was traversing. — M. A. C, Jr. 



