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358 BULLETIN 133, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
heavily spotted below and more or less streaked with whitish and
buff above. Immature specimens in first winter plumage sometimes
have small cinnamon tips on some of the greater coverts. An adult
female, taken February 17, is in full molt. The bill, in adult males
at least, becomes yellow at the approach of spring, but in yovmg
males is dark. Females acquire yellow on part of the lower mandible,
but none were recorded with the bill entirely yellow. An
immature male, taken July 10, has the bill fuscous tinged with lighter
brown, becoming blacker at the base of the culmen ; iris Hay's brown
tarsus slate gray. An adult male, killed on the same date, had the
bill chamois, slightly darker about the nostril; tarsus light drab.
The present species does not have the colored skin about the eye
found in T. albicollis, which also differs in having a rufescent wash
on the sides.
These robins frequented thickets and growths of heavy timber
where they remained well hidden save when human or other dangerous
intruders were not known to be near. In heavy forest I found
them working about deadfalls, or less frequently found a little flock
running about on some grass plot where surrounding bushes af-
forded a screen that gave them some sense of security. Flocks also
gathered to feed on the drupes of fruit-bearing trees, such as Rafamea
laetevirens and others. At the slightest alarm all dived pre-
cipitately into the brush and were lost to view. When not afraid
they ran about with wings and tail jerking jauntily like common
robins, but when startled disappeared with all the furtiveness of
the smaller thrushes. Their flight is direct and fairly rapid.
Specimens from Tapia, Tucuman, appear whiter below than birds
from farther east and south. In the series at hand successful divi-
sion into geographic races may not be made.
TURDUS ANTHRACINUS^ Burmeister
Turdus anthracinus Bxjbmeisteb, Journ. fiir Ornith., 1858, p. 159. (Men-
doza.
)
Semimerula Sclater proposed for this and allied species does not
seem sufficiently distinct to merit generic rank.^° As Selby ^^ has
designated the European blackbird as the type of Turdus, this name
must supplant Planesticus, an observation made first bj^ Dr. C. W.
Richmond and recorded by Oberholser.^^ Since Hellmayr^^ has
shown that Turdus fuscater d'Orbigny and Lafresnaye, the name
previously applied to the species under discussion here, is in reality
the large northern bird formerly called gigas, old friends of the
^ See Ridgway, Birds North and Middle America, vol. 4, 1907, p. 90.
« 111. British Orn., vol. 1, pt. 1, Land Birds, 1825, p. xxix.
^ Proc. Biol. Soe. Washington, vol. 34, June 30, 1921, p. 105.
^ Nov. Zool., vol. 28, September, 1921, p. 236.
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