THE CONDOR.
Bulletin of the Cooper Ornithological Club.
A Bi-monthly Exponent of Californian Ornithology.
Two Years With Mexican Birds. I. Giraud's Flycatcher.
(Myiozeleles lexensis).
By E. H. Skinner.
[Read before the Northern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club, March 2, 1901. ]
FOR two years I was located near Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. This is the southernnost point of the Mexican republic, and properly speaking in Central America, as it is south of the isthmus of Tehuantepee. Tapachula is in nearly the same longitude as St. Louis and in the same latitude as southern Guatemala and northern Honduras.
Along the coast there is a belt of lowlands averaging thirty miles in width, and back of this belt the mountains rise abruptly to an elevation of ten thousand feet. The lowlands are covered with almost impenetrable tropical jungles, with here and there patches of dreary, treeless, uninhabited plains covered with coarse grass. The heat on these plains is intense and burning, and even in the shady jungle it is suffocating.
All day long there is an almost unbroken silence. The insects can hardly get up energy to chirp. The Turkey and Black Vultures sit motionless on the limbs of some dead tree or circle lazily in the air. The egret roosts in the shade along the sloughs. The Motmot in the jungle sits on a branch and at long intervals utters his coot, coot in a heavy bass, but toward nightfall the chachalaca, the parrots and macaws vie with each other in making the evening hideous with their discordant cries.
Going inland the temperature grows lower as we ascend the foothills, and when we reach an elevation of 5,000 feet the distinctively tropical trees have disappeared, as well as the lowland birds. Here among the semi-tropical forests of oak, palms and countless other trees, is the home of the Quesal (Pharomacrus mocinno), the national bird of Guatemala, which pines away and dies if denied its liberty. Among these woods are clearings planted to coffee. This semi-tropical country along the mountainside is called the coffee belt.
Near the summit there are forests of pine, but on the plateau and higher volcanoes the trees are stunted, it being very hot in the daytime and freezing at night. Here we find bluejays, crows, killdeers and other birds of a temperate clime. Having spent most of my time in the coffee belt, I am more familiar with its birds than with those of other sections, so I shall try to describe its most noticeable bird, Giraud's Flycatcher (Myiozeletes texensis), which although not the commonest variety, is the most
