De Benedicts 1964 3 March Playas, Guayas Prov., Ecuador. cliff is a Calif. equivalent - except that the land is dry. We spent most of the day at the Hotel Humb- oldt at Playas. The area around the hotel had been cleared, but on the hills there was an arid scrub in form like a low, open Calif. chaparral, very dry, and on a red soil. Around the hotel there were large dry areas, and guelias (some with water, in which there were scattered Acacia and (? sp.) trees 20-30 ft high + patches of brush and low plants. Birds were easy to see here due to the lack of cover, and I became familiar with much of the passerine fauna of the region here. The ocean here was a populated sandy beach with no birds except at sea; water turkey. The soil was quite sandy at this area, and pale coloured. From here we went towards a town c. 6-8 km. S on the coast but the cliff road there was so muddy we never made it. We stopped in a lush open scrub, trees and low acacias growing in patches with grass and bare soil, salt pan - sand - in between and much of a ticklept, long, sharp spined "crees" cactus. Some of the scrub near Tortenga Bay, or the desert of Arizona grassland country is similar to this. Birds were common here and very hard to see. Little song doves the most conspicuous part of the avifauna. At all these localities a small Tropiclinus, a large