FAMILY TROGLODYTIDAE 



Chiriqui. It is found also on the highest mountain peaks of Costa Rica. 

 This wren was described by Bangs from a series of 11 specimens col- 

 lected by W. W. Brown, Jr., in May and June, 1901. The collector 

 found this species "wholly confined to the cane brakes on top of the 

 Volcan de Chiriqui ... It lived much after the manner of a marsh wren, 

 and its song and notes were wholly unlike those of any wren" known to 

 him. In the American Museum of Natural History there are 2 females 

 collected by H. J. Watson, October 1 and 4, 1904. On the labels the 

 collector noted colors of the soft parts as follows: "Iris violet, feet 

 brown, bill black." From the Monniche collection Blake recorded 2 

 females July 8 (year not indicated) from the summit of the volcano 

 above Copete, and 2 males and 2 females July 12, at about 4200 m 

 elevation. 



Little is recorded of these birds. Worth, in a brief note (Bird-Lore, 

 vol. 41, 1939, p. 282), wrote that they live in bamboo thickets, and that 

 the song "is unlike that of any House Wren I have heard. It is not a 

 finished entity, like a House Wren's performance, but only a cyclically 

 repeated phrase without musical beginning or end; it could ... be as 

 short or prolonged as desired. The scolding note . . . however, bears 

 some resemblance to the House Wren's complaining, but it lacks the to- 

 and-fro rasping quality of the House Wren, being a single utterance of 

 uniform timbre." 



In Costa Rica, Slud (Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 128, 1964, p. 

 291) found closely allied races inhabiting "the bushy scrub and impen- 

 etrable canelike bamboos that border the high-altitude forests, at breaks 

 and above the limit of trees. Though usually met singly or in twos, a 

 number of individuals may be scattered over an area. This stub-tailed, 

 white- winged little wren is active in the dense low cover; it may be 

 silent but it is not shy. The behavior and the thickety habitat are typi- 

 cal of a wren. Its patterned song is thin, not very clear, rather mea- 

 sured, wrenlike." C. Hartshorne, regarding the song at Cerro de la 

 Muerte, Costa Rica (3,090 m), says (in Utt. to Eisenmann) it is as 

 long or longer than that of the Winter Wren, but not quite as loud or as 

 musical. It "consists of two slightly contrasting phrases, repeated fast 

 over and over, something like 'bussell-bissell, bussell-bissell,' etc. for as 

 many as ten or more seconds. This is a crude description except for 

 the idea of the slight contrast and the numerous quick repetitions." 



The nest and eggs are not known. 



Oberholser (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 27, 1904, p. 198) proposed 

 for it the separate genus Thryorchilus on the basis that it has only 10 

 rectrices instead of the 12 found in Troglodytes. 



