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9

Pezopetes, Oct. 9,1960, II  

One of the birds I saw later in the morning seemed disturbed by my presence, and had a definite CR (silent). So I think that the CR is an indication of alarm in this species also.

I heard quite a lot of "greetings" during the course of the morning. I can now amplify my previous descriptions of the typical series of notes during this vocalization. Complete "greetings" are as follows: They always begin by a series of metallic notes, the notes I called "MW" in my description of Oct. 4. This is usually followed by a series of "Buzzy Notes", which I shall call "BN." They are rather variable. Some might be transcribed as "Zawawh zawah zawah zawah..."; while others might be transcribed as :"zee zee zee..." (The latter are obviously the "Zeee" Notes which rather puzzled me yesterday - see p.8). These BN's are usually followed by a soft, formless, warble, very much like the WBl of the Yellow-thighs. I shall call it "Wbl" too.

I think that it my description of the "greetings" on Oct. 4, 1960, p.5, I probably confused BN's and Wbl's under the term "SN." (I did, however, distinguish between them - to some extent- in the descriptions of the peculiar vocalizations on Oct. 4, 1960, p.6) The BN's and Wbl's may intergrade, and more or less intermediate notes are sometimes uttered; but the two patterns are usually quite distinct.

The complete "greetings" are usually uttered when the birds of a pair come together after an appreciable (in time and/or space) separation. I still do not know if one or both bird(s) usually utter the "greeting" in such circumstances. (I thought at one time this morning that one bird uttered the MW's while the other utter the BN-Wbl patterns - but this is probably not very likely to be the general rule).

When mated birds re-join one another after a very short and/or very slight separation, "they" usually utter only a very abbreviated "greeting." A brief match of Wbl and nothing else. This would suggest that the Wbl is a