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C. B. Kepler

Publications and source records attributed to C. B. Kepler.

69 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

A new species of warbler (Parulidae) from Puerto Rico

The West Indies are among the best known of the world's tropical regions, and our knowledge of the distribution of indigenous land birds in the Greater Antilles has been thought to be nearly complete (Bond, 1956). The last new species from the Antilles were described in 1927, the results of work in the Zapata Swamp of Cuba (Barbour and Peters, 1927) and the isolated Morne de la Selle in Haiti (Wetmore, 1927). No new species has been found in Puerto Rico in this century, and it would seem unlikely that a bird could escape detection on the island, which has a human population density now approaching 320 per square km, and less than 3,300 ha (0.4 percent of land area) of virgin forest remaining (Wads- worth, 1949). Nevertheless the discovery of extant populations of the Puerto Rican Whip-poor-will ( Caprimulgus noctitherus ) by Reynard (1962) and the Puerto Rican Plain Pigeon ( Columba inornata wetmorei ) by Leopold (1963), both previously presumed extinct (Bond, 1956, 1961), indicated that the inventory of the Puerto Rican avifauna might be incomplete.

The Auk

Active anting in the Puerto Rican tanager

Anting, a bird’s intentional exposure of its body surface to chemical substances secreted by ants or other agents, has been recorded in over 20 species of birds of 40 families, mostly within the order Passeriformes. Our observations of anting in the Puerto Rico tanager ( Neospingus speculiferus ) extend the phenomenon to a new genus and the 14 th species of the Thraupidae.

The Auk