Benedict 1964 3 March Playas, Guayas Prov., Ecuador. Sitin zone of Santa Cruz Is.; the vegetation was spread, of low cacti with occasional higher trees growing solitarily and in clumps, and with occasional patches of grass and low, loose shrubs (legumes mostly) in between. A few "cereus" cactus add to the effect. A comparable place in North America would be the open scrub forest, near Mazatlan, Sinaloa, for example or in the middle level of some of the Arizona canyons. The cacti's seem 15-20 ft high, the taller trees twice that. Birds were plentiful here but hard to see. They gave no resemblance to the island fauna at all; finches were non-existent, while "flycatchers" were abundant. The silence made a great difference in the impression, and the vocabulary was completely different, songs being almost all high buzz songs or low, fast trilling, Tyrannid-type songs, instead of the "fit-notes" songs of the islands. I will list the birds later, with notes to the other places they were seen. The second locality here we visited very briefly from 4:30 to a little after 5. It was dense, scrubby cacti except for the creek bottom, which was bare, and afew heavy-leaved trees the same height (15-20 ft.) Across the highway there were some very large trees much like those of the jungle a little farther south. Some of the scrub near the seismograph station at Acaecmy Bay is similar to this; a open high willow