No. 6. — Notes on the Birds of Rio Frio (near Santa Marta), Magdalena, Colombia By p. J. Darlington, Jr. During the fourteen months from February, 1928, to April, 1929, I was employed as entomologist in the Colombia Division of the United Fruit Company. Although the chief task in hand was the study of banana insects, holidays and late afternoons were available for recreation. The first claim on my spare time was made by the private collecting of beetles, but after a few months an occasional hour and, more important in the tropics, a little extra energy were found for ornithological work. This was begun in June, when other work had more or less settled into a routine, and was continued, with a few inter-ruptions, until the following April. It is unnecessary to include here a detailed description of the coun-try, for a complete account with maps and photographs is being pre-pared and will probably be published in another bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Briefly, then, my headquarters were at Rio Frio, a small town lying near the middle of a large triangle of flat coastal plain. The apex of the triangle, to the north, is in a semi-arid region at the port of Santa Marta, while the base, to the south, is in humid country near Aracataca and the Fundacion River. The triangle is about fifty miles long. It is bounded on the west by the Caribbean coast and by a large, swampy, saline lake called the Cienaga Grande, and on the east by the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Rio Frio is located in the intermediate country between the northern dry and the southern humid areas, and is, therefore, favorably situated for a study of the birds of both. A good trail leads from the town into the moun-tains. Large fresh swamps are accessible near Cienaga, and smaller swamps and rivers are numerous. The important details of the plain are shown on the map on page 351. This entire area is a part of the "Santa Marta region" as defined by Todd and Carriker,' who give a detailed account of the region as a whole, although their description of the coastal plain is short. Since there were many different t^pes of habitat near Rio Frio, each with its quota of characteristic and, to me, unknown birds, I began ' The Birds of the Santa Marta Region of Colombia: A Study in Altitudinal Distribution. By W. E. Clyde Todd and M. A. Carriker, Jr. Annals of the Carnegie Museum, 14, 1922.
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