112 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA PART 4 



from their clear ringing songs, and their chattering calls. In higher 

 elevations they often frequented bracken and other tangled growth on 

 steep slopes in treeless pasturelands. Brown collected it in the Boquete 

 district at about 1800 m, but it is rare at such high elevations. In the 

 lowlands of Panama it favors damp, canopied forest, especially in hilly 

 areas and about ravines. 



The song is a loud, beautifully rich series of whistles, usually rather 

 short, mostly of three or four phrases, repeated many times and then 

 varied. The most characteristic song is churry-churry-cheeer (inter- 

 preted mnemonically by F. O. Chapelle as "pretty-pretty-bird"), and 

 variations; Eisenmann has also heard whee-tew-tew and chooweeoo- 

 choowereh chwee-tew-tew. One vocalization suggested a slightly aber- 

 rant song of the Green Shrike- Vireo syllabized as teea-teea-teeoo. Calls 

 include a peculiar bweeer or beeer, which reminded Ridgely of a note 

 of the Swainson's Thrush. E. S. Morton has made a tape recording 

 (Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology) of a hoarse, throaty, rather frog- 

 like hreer or hreeyee (syllabized by Eisenmann from the recording). 

 Usually the bird sings from a concealed position, very low in a tangle 

 or thicket, but occasionally in the dense vegetation of a tree. 



This species is not infrequently attracted to army-ant swarms, and 

 may also forage below wandering bands of antbirds. The small tail is 

 often carried cocked up. 



Skutch (Pac. Coast Avif. no. 34, 1960, pp. 140-143) records that 

 they build a rather flimsy nest for sleeping, a rounded ball of partly 

 weathered leaves, with an opening at one end, placed in forest under- 

 growth elevated 1 or 2 m, sometimes more, above the ground. Adults 

 may be accompanied by a single young bird, but otherwise sleep alone. 

 Nesting structures for eggs and young were more substantial. The 

 eggs, two in number, were clear white, with measurements of 14.3-15.1 

 X 20.6-23.0. 



In another account of nest and eggs (identified as those of this race 

 but listed under the synonym tropaea), Huber (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Philadelphia, vol. 84, 1932, p. 238), on May 19, 1922, in forest back of 

 the Eden mine, northeastern Nicaragua, near the headwaters of the 

 Rio Bambana, flushed one of these wrens "from a nest containing two 

 fresh eggs. The nest, about eighteen inches above the ground, was 

 placed in a crevice in a fallen log. This old moss-covered log lay close 

 to a trail in the heavy forest and the jar from my weight . . . flushed the 

 bird. The nest, a carefully made, bulky, globular-shaped affair com- 

 posed of fern stems, plant fibers, and moss, is lined with fine grasses. 

 The entrance is from the side. The outside diameters are 190 X 130 mm. 



