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49

Aramides cajauea, I          

August 2, 1960  
Barro Colorado

One thing I noticed yesterday morning was that the new chicks were usually silent when all together in their cage. Only once in a while would one or more of the chicks (usually WH2, I think) utter a few soft peeps. There appeared to be low intensity undifferentiated P's still. Not prolonged or plaintive like well-developed PP's.

Yesterday evening, after supper, around 7:30 p.m.,one or more of the chicks was uttering more P's,,when just sitting quietly or moving normally around the cage. But such P's were still by no means very frequent. The chicks were still more often silent than not. I think that some of the P's uttered last night may have been slightly longer than in the morning. They were all still very soft. I think that the longer P's last night may well have been the beginning of PP patterns.

By 6:30 a.m. this morning, the chicks were uttering quite a lot of peeps in their cage. All their peeps were still very soft. Some of them were still short, still indistinctive P's. But quite a large proportion were relatively long, and some were quite plaintive in quality. In other words, the PP patterns were becoming quite distinct by this morning.

I ran some simple tests on a couple of the birds around 6:35 a.m. this morning.

WH2 I put the bird on the floor, and then dragged my hand slowly away. The bird followed my hand very well. It uttered P's and PP's during this following. Most of the time it followed by walking, but every once in a while it would run a few inches. When it actually ran, it tended to utter series of P notes quite rapidly [[image -__ __ __ __]]. This may