512 BIRDS OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA PART 4 



upper surface green, throat deep buff, with thin blue stripe on side, rest 

 of undersurface streaked green and yellowish. 



Description. — Length 98-102 mm. Adult male, lores to patch just 

 behind eye, throat, wings, tail, and thighs black; forecrown and side of 

 throat light violaceous blue; rest of body darker. 



Female, entire upper surface, including wing coverts, bright shining 

 green; remiges and rectrices black, with outer webs edged bright green; 

 lores and orbital ring ochraceous-tawny; throat deep buff; narrow line 

 on side of throat turquoise; breast, sides, and flanks finely streaked 

 green, turquoise, and pale yellow; center of abdomen, undertail coverts, 

 and bend of wing pale yellow; underwing coverts whitish. 



A male collected April 8, 1947, on the Rio Jaque, Darien, had the 

 tarsus and toes primuline yellow, claws black. 



Measurements. — Males (10 from Darien and Colombia), wing 51.5- 

 57.6 (54.0), tail 27.0-32.4 (28.9, average of 9), culmen from base 16.7- 

 20.4 (19.0), tarsus 12.7-14.5 (13.7) mm. 



Females (10 from Darien and Colombia), wing 50.5-53.5 (52.1), 

 tail 24.3-26.7 (26.1), culmen from base 16.1-19.1 (17.3), tarsus 12.9- 

 16.8 (14.0) mm. 



Resident. Known only from the lowlands and lower foothills of 

 eastern Darien. In April 1947, Watson M. Perrygo and I collected 9 at 

 localities on the upper Rio Jaque — at Las Pefiitas, Chicao, and at the 

 mouth of the Rio Imamado. On February 23, 1971, Pedro Galindo 

 took a male at 798 m on Cerro Quia and on March 15 of that year he 

 collected a female there at 720 m. When I saw Purple Honeycreepers, 

 they were always in groups feeding about epiphytes in the tops of the 

 tallest trees in heavy forest This race is also found in western Colom- 

 bia and western Ecuador; the range of the species extends to northern 

 Bolivia and Amazonian Brazil. In extreme northwestern Choco, Co- 

 lombia, on the Rio Jurado, it is sympatric with the Shining Honey- 

 creeper (Haffer, Bonner Zool. Mon. 7, 1975, p. 157). 



ffrench (Birds of Trinidad, 1973, p. 397) reports that in Trinidad 

 it feeds on insects and spiders, gleaned from leaves and twigs, and on 

 nectar and fruit juices. Nests in Trinidad are known from April and 

 June; one was a small cup of moss lined with dark rootlets set in the 

 hollow of a small stump 2 m above the ground. Two eggs from Brazil 

 were white, spotted with dark brown; measurements averaged 17.5 X 

 13.0 mm. In Trinidad, the male helps to feed the young. At the Phila- 

 delphia Zoo, where this species bred in 1970 and 1971, the female did 

 all the incubation; the nest and eggs matched earlier descriptions 

 (Bond in litt. to Eisenmann). 



