34 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



tough-rooted grass had invaded and taken over these cultivated milpas 

 were returning again to the densest jungle. Large areas were covered 

 with good sized trees. The general elevation was less than 200 feet 

 above the sea, and the whole area lay in the humid section of the 

 tropical zone. 



There followed interesting days in rapid procession. Stewart 

 needed a dark room for his photography, and I, space to store my 

 birds, so Juan Santos, local architect, built for us a house of poles 

 and bamboo, bound together with tough vines and thatched skillfully 

 with palm leaves, all cut in the nearby forest. The morning alarm 

 clock, half an hour before dawn, was the complaining cry of the large 

 brown jays, and at night I fell asleep to the insistent who are you' 

 who are' you of goatsuckers {Nyctidromus albicollis) that came out 

 of the forest at dusk to watch for insects in our clearing. 



Birds of many kinds abounded in the forest, and each day brought 

 its new kinds of strange form and interesting color. With Ramon 

 as assistant, to carry the game bag and to clear trail with his machete 

 where necessary, I spent my mornings afield in search of specimens. 

 Flycatchers, tanagers, wrens, thrushes, and woodpeckers abounded, 

 with hawks, toucans, owls and many others of larger or smaller size. 

 And with these were multitudes of familiar birds from the eastern 

 United States here for the winter, their numbers increasing in early 

 April as the northward migration began and a vast horde came pour- 

 ing through this relatively narrow stretch of land at the northern 

 end of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from winter quarters to the 

 south of us. Among these, magnolia warblers were especially com- 

 mon, and in early April I saw more orchard orioles than I had ob- 

 served in all my previous years as a naturalist. Lincoln's sparrows 

 fed in our clearing with all the familiarity of dooryard song sparrows, 

 so that I gained an entirely new idea of this species that I had known 

 previously in the north only as a shy migrant. Occasionally I had 

 glimpses of the more timid yellow-breasted chats ; or summer tanagers 

 or indigo buntings appeared. 



In the pleasant afternoons, as I worked on specimens or notes 

 under the sheltering porch of our house, the clear, varied song of 

 the spotted-breasted wren (Pheugopedius maculipecttis) came from 

 the adjacent jungle, flocks of black vultures wheeled over the open 

 pastures, yellow-breasted flycatchers of several kinds called from 

 the trees, and there was a constant flitting of redstarts, gnatcatchers, 

 and others of the smaller species through the bushes bordering the 

 clearing. From the adjacent forest there came continually strange 

 calls and songs, some of which after 6 weeks remained unidentified. 



