Bulletin - United States National Museum - si-pddr - Smithsonian ...

164 BULLETIN 133, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
A female shot October 28 showed Avell-developed ovaries. On
November 2 I flushed one from a nest and killed it, but unfortu-
nately lost it, so that I did not learn the sex. The nest was placed
under a tuft of dead grass on a dry, open island a hundred meters
in extent, surrounded by a broad expanse of marsh. The site
selected was on dry, open ground 15 meters from water. A few
grass stems had been broken down to form a little protected cavity,
entirely covered save in front, in which the two eggs lay with no
nest lining. In its lack of definite structure the whole reminded me
of the nest of a Wilson's phalarope. Incubation had begun. The
eggs, suggestive in a way of those of the black tern, have a ground
color slightly brighter than pale olive buff, spotted with heavj?^ irreg-
ular spots of black, and less extensively with buffy brown and Saccardo's
umber. The markings are much bolder and heavier in one
than in the other. The two eggs measured 34.7 by 24.6 mm. and
34.2 by 24 mm.
Near the Laguna Castillos below San Vicente, Rocha, Uruguay,
an adult male was taken among rushes on January 31, 1921.
The species was next encountered in the cienagas near Tunuyan,
Mendoza, Avhere it was common on March 25 and 26. Here painted
snipe frequented scattered clumps of grass or Scirpus at the border
of dense stands of cat-tails or, less often, marsh vegetation dead
or living that bordered channels of almost bottomless black mud.
At times a dozen or fifteen birds flushed together from some shel-
tered opening among the cat-tails, but more often they were encountered
alone. Once or twice one darted in to alight near me and
instantly assumed a motionless attitude, standing with legs erect but
with the head and body inclined forward with the bill almost touch-
ing the earth. Occasionally one broke this tense attitude by a jerky
bow and then became motionless once more. Two adult males were
taken on March 26 and one on March 28. Though it was fall, testes
in these birds were 8 mm. long, as large as white navy beans.
An adult female shot October 28 had the tip of the bill cinnamon
buff; base strontian yellow; the intermediate space on maxilla water
green, and on mandible celandine green; iris Rood's brown; tarsus
and toes vetiver green, shading to deep grape green on toes and
inside of tarsus.
Family CHARADRIIDAE
CHARADRIUS COLLARIS Vieillot
Charadrius collaris Vieillot, Nouv. Diet. Hist. Nat., vol. 27, 1818, p. 136.
(Paraguay.)
The widely ranging collared plover was recorded in small num-
bers at several localities. Two were recorded at Santa Fe, Santa Fe,
on July 4, 1920, and one July 8 at Resistencia, Chaco. On the whole