1917.] Chapman, Distribution of Bird-life in Colombia. 35 



paratively little of this open-country fauna was collected and most of the 

 birds came either from the narrow strip of woods along the river, or from 

 Santa Rita, a small tributary with well-wooded banks, entering from the 

 west. The Santa Rita is a beautiful dashing mountain stream, cutting 

 through the rock in narrow gorges or pouring over huge boulders and arched 

 over by luxuriant vegetation, rich in moss and epiphytes; perhaps the most 

 luxuriant that we found except in parts of the Western Andes. Here lived 

 the Cock-of-the-Rock and Pharomacrtis." 



Laguneta. — " The forest in which we pitched our tent at Laguneta, at 

 an altitude of 10,300 feet, is fairly open. The vegetation includes a few 

 small palms, tree ferns, orchids and epiphytes of many kinds but gives one 

 the general effect "of some of our denser northern forests. The large trees, 

 of which some are oaks, are rather sparingly branched and thinly leaved so 

 that sunlight reaches the ground in most places. The orchids, 'pines,' 

 moss and other epiphytes on the branches are responsible for as much shade 

 as the trees themselves. The undergrowth is not dense except in the clear- 

 ings — it being the vines and 'climbing bamboo' that makes the forest 

 impenetrable. The forest floor is remarkably bare with very few herbaceous 

 plants (due to season ?), few ferns, and no moss (on the ground). The 

 leaves are mostly thick and heavily glutinized or covered with down and, 

 though some are large, the average is small. The clearings resemble our 

 northern clearings in general appearance — ■ grown up to bushes and small 

 trees. Here occurs a pokeberry upon which certain birds feed. The under- 

 brush is always extremely dense and almost impenetrable without a knife. 



" We remained in this camp from August 30 until September 1 1 . During 

 this time we had very favorable weather with but little light rain. For 

 several days, however, we had very high winds. The temperature was very 

 uniform averaging 48° at 6: 30 A. M. and 64° at noon (the nearest to maxi- 

 mum and minimum that we could get)." 



Rio Tochi. — "Most of the collecting here was done along the river 

 where there was a sparse growth of trees, but two trips were made up the 

 river to where it was heavily forested, humid and luxuriant, resembhng the 

 banks off Santa Rita near Salento. A few birds, notably Atlapetes flaviceps, 

 were taken from the brush covering the cleared mountainsides of the open 

 valley not far from the trail." 



El Eden.— "The country about El Eden at an altitude of 8500 to 9000 

 feet, seemed intermediate between the valley type, such as was found at 

 Salento, and the cloud forests of Laguneta. This is due, I suppose, to the 

 large amount of clearing and the comparatively small extent and isolation 

 (?) of the forest. In the forest, birds were very scarce and in the open 

 country birds were also less abundant than elsewhere. We were disap- 



