52 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM VOL. 95 
borders of the thickets scattered through the rolling pasturelands 
below the forest. It was highly amusing to watch them hopping 
awkwardly around, as we passed only 40 or 50 feet away. On Novem- 
ber 11 after another rain I saw two flocks perched in the open in 
small groves in the pastures. 
Family PICIDAH 
PHLOEOCEASTES GUATEMALENSIS GUATEMALENSIS (Hartlaub) 
Picus guaiemalensis HARTLAUB, Rev. Zool., vol. 7, 1844, p. 214 (Guatemala). 
On October 24 I shot a pair from dead trees in a new clearing in 
the forest along the river above Liberia. October 30 I watched an- 
other pair working at a nest hole 40 feet from the ground in a dead 
tree standing in a bushy pasture. The female was inside working, 
while the male clambered up and down the trunk occasionally look- 
ing in at her. On November:7 I recorded one below the house at the 
Hacienda Santa Maria in a wooded ravine leading through the pastures. 
Recently Dickey and van Rossem ” have stated that the ivory- 
billed woodpeckers of this group from Costa Rica and Panamé are 
separable from typical guatemalensis by a yellowish or buffy suffusion 
on the ventral surface. After comparison of a good series from Costa 
Rica, including the two fresh specimens that I secured at Liberia, 
with an equally good lot from Guatemala and Honduras, I find that 
the alleged difference does not hold, birds being whitish or yellowish 
in cast without regard to their occurrence in the geographic regions 
stipulated. I believe that the supposed variation may be due in 
part to adventitious stain, and so it would occur at random. 
CEOPHLOEUS LINEATUS SIMILIS (Lesson) 
Picus similis Lesson, Oeuvres complétes de Buffon, vol. 20, Apr. 1847, p. 204 
(San Carlos, El Salvador). 
Above the town of Liberia I shot a male of this species on October 
25 in the same forest clearing where I had taken Phloeoceastes guate- 
malensis guatemalensis on the previous day. So similar are these two 
woodpeckers that, in fact, I killed this bird by a snap shot under the 
impression that it was Phloeoceastes, not realizing its true identity 
until it was in the hand. On October 27 I saw a pair working over 
fence posts and small trees in a region of partly wooded pastures 
south of town. They were alert but tame, jerking the head con- 
stantly and throwing the crest erect, and occasionally giving a rat- 
tling call faintly suggestive of the note of the pileated woodpecker of 
the United States. The following day I noted a pair in dead trees 
scattered through cultivated fields. ‘These birds are much easier to 
skin than Phloeoceastes. 
12 Publ. Field Mus. Nat. Hist., zool. ser., vol. 23, 1938, p. 320. 
