FAMILY FRINGILLIDAE 



531 



Resident. Fairly common in the lowlands on the Caribbean slope 

 from Bocas del Toro east to Mandinga, San Bias, where I collected 

 several in 1957; on the Pacific slope it is local and scattered: Brown 

 took a female at Boquete, Chiriqui (1200 m) ; in 1901 (Bangs, Proc. 

 New England Zool. Club, vol. 3, 1902, p. 68); I found several at El 

 Valle, Code, in 1951 between 600 and 750 m; and Ridgely (1976, p. 

 328) reports it from Cerro Campana and once from the Rio Bayano in 

 the Province of Panama. Ridgely (in litt.) reports a pair seen Febru- 

 ary 28 to March 5, 1981, at the Cana airstrip in southeastern Darien. 

 The birds were seen by Ridgely, Victor Emanuel, and several others. 

 This is the first record from Darien. In the Canal Zone, Ridgely knows 

 of only 1 sighting away from the Caribbean coast, a single bird he saw 

 at the Madden Lake Scout Camp on July 10, 1975. It is also found in 

 western Costa Rica; other races range north to central Mexico. 



Figure 41. — Black-headed Saltator, Saltador Cabecinegro, Saltator atriceps 



lacertosus. 



This noisy bird inhabits shrubby thickets in clearings and at the edge 

 of forest; it is not found in the forest interior. It often moves in small 

 groups and its harsh scolding notes are heard almost constantly. I was 

 surprised to find that this species has a high, thin song — tseety, tseety- 

 tseety-tseety-tseety — that sooner suggests an antbird or a warbler than 

 a bird of this size. They usually sing early in the morning from perches 

 in plain view between 3 and 10 m from the ground. Ridgely also men- 

 tions a "cackling and squawking" song. Their diet is varied, including 

 seeds and insects. At Mandinga, San Bias, I watched several feed on 

 the blossoms of a climbing pea, which they pluck and cut up, slowly 

 manipulating them in the bill, apparently with the aid of the tongue, and 



