696 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
dull-colored species we saw several and secured four in the general vicinity of 
Gbanga and Bakratown in the eastern interior, but Biittikofer records a pair 
and its nest in the forests behind Monrovia, as well as others at Schieffelinsville 
and Jarjee. They are usually unsuspicious and of lethargic movements. Those 
we saw were in small second-growth trees as well as in isolated trees near larger 
stretches of forest. They feed chiefly, perhaps almost wholly, on ants, the 
stomachs of those shot being crammed with a small black species of Cremasto- 
gaster. These live in nests forming nodular excrescences on the trunks of large 
trees and a bird or a pair together will often spend a long time clinging to such a 
nest, picking up the ants at leisure. 
Campethera caroli arizelus (Oberholser). Liberian Brown-eared Woodpecker 
Dendromus caroli arizelus Oberholser, Proc. U. 8. Nat. Mus., vol. 22, p. 29, 1899: Mt. Coffee, 
Liberia. 
Slightly larger than the preceding species; wings and body above golden olive, crown dark 
olive brown, tail black; a pale superciliary stripe; a patch behind and below the eye brown; 
chin, throat, chest, and abdomen dull olive with round buffy spots. Male with red crown. Liberia. 
This is evidently a rare bird in Liberia. We saw but a single one, a female, 
in rather open primeval forest on the summit of a large hill near Banga. It was 
at work on a dead limb, evidently securing ants, for its stomach was filled with 
them, and when shot it had a black ant in its bill. Buiittikofer secured an adult 
female at Bavia, two others at Mt. Olive and Mt. Gallilee, and others still at 
Schieffelinsville and Johnny Creek. He describes the crown of the female as 
olivaceous and the eye stripe and under wing-coverts verdigris. 
Campethera nivosa nivosa (Swainson). Buffy-spotted Woodpecker 
Dendromus nivosus Swainson, Birds West Africa, vol. 2, p. 162, 1837: West Africa 
Resembling the last, but smaller (length about 6.5 inches); the throat streaked with brown ona 
whitish ground, the auriculars dull buffy instead of brown. Gambia to Angola. 
This is almost a smaller replica of the last, but a much commoner species. 
We occasionally saw them singly or in pairs, sometimes working in a lethargic 
way on the dead limbs or smaller trunks, on the edges of scrub growth or on 
larger trees bordering cleared areas. Near Paiata, while we were ferrying our 
party and baggage across the St. Paul, a pair of these woodpeckers were at work 
on a large nodular nest of a common black ant (Cremastogaster) hardly twenty 
feet above the heads of the assembled throng of near a hundred noisy natives. 
The birds clung in various positions to the nest picking lazily now and then, 
and evidently securing an abundant supply of ants with very little exertion. 
They seemed almost oblivious of the disturbance, and even at the discharge of a 
gun started a little but presently settled deliberately back to their meal. Their 
actions remind one of a sapsucker in their sedentary methods of work, while the 
weak bill is evidently in this genus to be correlated with their ant-eating habits, 
for the abundance of the insects and the ease with which they may be picked up 
about the nests requires very little labor in excavating. Biittikofer mentions 
but three specimens, one of which, a male, was shot from the nest about eight 
feet above the ground, at Robertport. 
