FAMILY FRINGILLIDAE 



591 



Female (1 from Los Santos), wing 67.5, tail 66.7, culmen from base 

 15.7, tarsus 25.2 mm. 



Resident. Aldrich and Bole discovered this distinctly marked race 

 on the western side of the Azuero Peninsula in Veraguas. Near their 

 camps at Cavulla (1000 m) it occurred in small flocks among the 

 dwarfed trees of the forest margin. On February 21, 1962, C. O. 

 Handley and F. M. Greenwell collected 1 in cloud forest at Cerro Hoya, 

 Los Santos, that matches the original description of this race. 



ATLAPETES TORQUATUS (Lafresnaye and d'Orbigny): Stripe- 

 headed Brush-finch, Pinzon Rastrojero Cabecirayado 



Embernagra torquata Lafresnaye and d'Orbigny, 1837, Mag. Zool. [Paris], 7, 

 cl. 2, p. 34. (Carcuta, Bolivia.) 



Medium size; head black, sometimes with gray superciliary and cen- 

 tral crown stripes; upper surface olive-green; most of undersurface 

 white. 



Description. — Length 174-184 mm. Adult (sexes alike) , head black, 

 in some races with gray superciliary and central crown stripes; upper 

 surface, including wing coverts, olive-green; remiges and rectrices 

 dusky, edged olive-green; sides of breast gray; sides, flanks, and under- 

 tail coverts olive-green; rest of undersurface white; bend of wing 

 yellow. 



Juvenile, upper surface olive-green; undersurface dark gray, tinged 

 olive-green. 



Three races of this species are found in Panama; they are clearly 

 distinguished by the extent of gray striping on the crown, which is 

 prominent in costaricensis of western Chiriqui and decreases eastward 

 until it is just a slight trace in atricapillus of Cana, Darien. Thirteen 

 other races are recognized, ranging from north-central Mexico to Bo- 

 livia and Argentina. 



Paynter (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 148, 1978, pp. 323-369) has 

 reviewed the taxonomy of this species and proposed a classification 

 somewhat different from that of previous authors. He regards costari- 

 censis as a disjunct subspecies of torquatus and maintains atricapillus 

 as a separate species. The form tacarcunae was considered to be a sub- 

 species of atricapillus and Paynter denied that it is ' 'morphologically 

 intermediate between costaricensis and atricapillus." This treatment 

 is difficult to understand when viewed in light of the specimens in the 

 Smithsonian collections. Specimens of tacarcunae from the Cerro Azul 

 area of eastern Province of Panama have distinct, though somewhat 

 narrower, gray superciliary and median crown stripes and are actually 



