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

32 BULLETIN 133, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
of the parent—certainly a curious circumstance—taken either to
supply partly digested vegetable food, or water, in a region where
succulent vegetation was scarce and moisture absent.
On December 6 I noted "many martinetas, as these tinamou are
called, in traveling by train to Zapala in western Neuquen. Scat-
tered individuals were common, while it was not rare to see 30 or
40, or even 100, all adults, banded together. These frequently ex-
hibited little alarm, appearing graceful in their attitudes in con-
trast to their stiff, stilted motions when startled. At times one ran
out and bowed abruptly, throwing the head down almost between the
feet. Near Zapala on December 7 I found where some predatory
animal had eaten a martineta, but noted no further sign of them
there.
Near Victorica, Pampa, these tinamou were fairly common and an
immature bird was taken. Males were heard whistling on December
29. On March 27, on the flats bordering the Eio Tunuyan, a short
distance south of Tunuyan, Mendoza, half a dozen were found in
company. On the low brush-covered sand hills east of the river,
the birds w^ere abundant and tracks were seen in the sand in many
places. An adult female secured on this day was about to lay, so
that the breeding season seems to vary considerably with the locality.
The hugely developed caeca found in the intestine of this bird,
differing greatly from those in any other known species, have been
described and figured by Beddard.^^ They are thin-walled sacs
with the external surface divided into many lobular projections
well marked toward the base, and tending to disappear at the free
end. The size is immense in proportion to the bulk of the bird. In
one specimen that I examined they measured roughly 130 mm. long
by 25 mm. in diameter, in another 125 mm. long by 22 mm. wade.
The distal end becomes smooth and more attenuate than the base.
In discussing a specimen of Calopezus e. forinosus (female), col-
lected by R. Kemp, at Laguna Alsina, Bonifacio de Cordoba, C.
Chubb ^^ gives a figure, taken from a sketch by the collector on the
original label of the bird, where the caeca are shown as elongate
cylindrical organs, somewhat swollen at intervals. The figure, how-
ever, does not agree wath the field notes, given immediately above it,
as there Mr. Kemp states, " Caeca—100 and 140 mm. Large, conical
and sacculated." It must be presumed that there has been some error
in attributing the sketch to the present bird as from the delineation,
no one would describe the caeca as large, conical, or sacculated. Per-
sonally I examined the caeca in about a dozen specimens of Calopezus
elegans, including birds of both sexes and in all found them of the
conical lobulated type figured and described by Beddard, though
« Ibis, 1890, pp. 61-66. ^' Ibis, 1919, p. 14.