228 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA — PART 4 



lected on June 4, 1963, by Dr. Pedro Galindo at 1440 m, 6.4 km west 

 of the summit of Cerro Mali, Darien. In Colombia this race — includ- 

 ing Zimmer's form disjunctus (Olson, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash, vol. 94, 

 1981, p. 363) — inhabits the entire extent of the western and central 

 Andes. The specimen from Panama has the pale undersurface typical 

 of Colombian birds and the upper surface most like that of dissors, to 

 which it was tentatively assigned (Olson, ibid) . 



HYLOPHILUS DECURTATUS (Bonaparte): Lesser Greenlet, 

 Verdecillo Menor 



Very small; crown gray or yellowish olive; rest of upper surface 

 yellowish olive-green; undersurface white, greenish yellow on flanks. 



Description. — Length 89-100 mm. Adult (sexes alike), crown either 

 medium gray (slightly mixed with yellowish olive) or all yellowish 

 olive; rest of upper surface yellowish green; wing coverts green; 

 remiges dusky, with primaries edged narrowly and secondaries broadly 

 green; tail green; narrow supraloral stripe and eye-ring whitish; side 

 of face light gray; sides of breast and flanks olive-yellow; rest of under- 

 surface white; edge of wing and underwing coverts pale yellow; under- 

 side of inner web of primaries and secondaries edged yellow. 



Immature, undersurface tinged with burly. 



The Lesser Greenlet is one of the commonest birds throughout the 

 Republic, occasionally up to about 1800 m but is absent from drier 

 scrubby or open areas on the Pacific lowlands of the eastern Azuero 

 Peninsula, Code, and western Province of Panama. It frequents forest 

 and second-growth woodland, where it gleans insects and spiders from 

 middle and upper level foliage in the active manner of a warbler. It 

 is a gregarious bird, often traveling in small groups, and a regular 

 member of interspecific flocks of insectivores. At Jaque, Darien, I 

 once saw 1 with a little flock of the antwren Myrmotherula axillaris. 

 Eisenmann (Condor, 1962, p. 507) considers it an ecological replace- 

 ment of Vireo flavoviridis in the lowland canopied forest. He adds, 

 however, that both occur together in lighter woodland and forest 

 borders. 



The green-crowned populations of eastern Panama, Colombia, and 

 western Ecuador, sometimes considered a distinct species, H. minor, 

 intergrade in central Panama with gray-crowned H. decurtatus, of 

 southern Mexico to western Panama. In the extensive series at the 

 Smithsonian, most gray-crowned H. d. decurtatus show at least some 

 green edging to the crown feathers. In the Province of Panama an ex- 

 ample from Cerro Chame shows almost none, but series from Cerro 



