FAMILY COKRKBIDAE 



517 



west of the Canal Zone ( Ridgely, 1976, p. 289) and in Darien ( Ridgely 

 in lift.). It is absent from the semi-arid lowlands of Code, southern 

 Azuero Peninsula, and western Province of Panama. This race is 

 found from Honduras south to northwestern Colombia; the species 

 ranges from southern Mexico to Bolivia and eastern Brazil. Aldrich 

 and Bole (Scient. Publ. Cleveland Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 7, 1937, p. 25) 

 found it common in humid forest on the western side of the Azuero 

 Peninsula between 300 and 900 m. I have encountered it as high as 

 1230 m, at Santa Clara, Chiriqui, on March 18, 1954. 



This race is doubtfully distinct from guatcmalensis Salvin, 1861, of 

 Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. The supposedly larger bill of the 

 northern bird is probably at best an average difference, but the material 

 of guatemalensis at hand is too scanty to determine more than the fact 

 that some overlap does indeed exist. 



The Green Honeycreeper inhabits forest, second-growth woodland, 

 and borders, where it usually stays rather high in tall trees. It some- 

 times joins mixed flocks, more often dominated by tanagers than by 

 other honeycreepers (Moynihan, Smiths. Misc. Coll., vol. 143, no. 7, 

 1962, p. 53), and rarely are more than 2 Green Honeycreepers part 

 of a single flock. At times they aggressively defend a feeding area: 

 Beehler (Wilson Bull., 1980, p. 516) observed a pair on Barro Colorado 

 Island, Canal Zone, during January 12-15, 1978, that for 4 days de- 

 fended a section of a flowering Luehea seemanii (Tiliaceae) from a 

 flock of Dacnis cayana, Cyanerpes cyaneus, and C. lucidus that was 

 foraging in another part of the tree. When defending a feeding area 

 or attacking another bird, Green Honeycreepers may be noisy, but their 

 vocalizations are not varied and nothing like a song has been recorded; 

 Eisenmann notes a "pst, pst; also a short nasal uhr, given by the male" 

 (Smiths. Misc. Coll., vol. 117, no. 5, 1952, p. 50). 



Stomachs examined by E. A. Goldman from birds collected at Cana, 

 Darien, indicate that their diet is rather evenly balanced between animal 

 and vegetable matter: 1 contained bits of two species of Aphodius 50%, 

 2 or more short-tongued bees 25%, fragments of small seeds of Mi- 

 conia sp. 25%; the other contained legs of a dipteran 2%, fragments 

 of a hymenopteran (Ichneumonid) 23%, 4 seeds of Ehretiaceae similar 

 to Bonrreria 15%, 10 other undetermined seeds and fragments of 

 drupes 60%. The stomach of a female in the AMNH collection taken 

 by E. S. Morton on Cerro Azul, eastern Province of Panama, on Feb- 

 ruary 12, 1971, contained fruit and seeds of Lasiacis, a grass that pro- 

 duces fleshy-covered, berrylike seeds. Green Honeycreepers probably 



