Male

Conothraupis mesoleuca

We made observations on this recently discovered (Critically Endangered) species in wet gallery forest along the rio Formoso, in Emas National Park, Goiás. Following its initial discovery in August 1938 in dry forest at Juruena, ‘north-east’ of Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, by A. Vellard, who collected the male holotype (Berlioz 1939), C. mesoleuca disappeared from the ornithological ‘radar’ until 2003, when it was rediscovered in Emas, although confirmation did not come until October 2004 (Buzzetti & Carlos 2005). Subsequently, in 2006, an apparently substantial population of the species was discovered along the upper rio Juruena, in western Mato Grosso (P. Develey in BirdLife International 2008), remarkably close to where J. F. Pacheco (in Sick 1997) had considered the whereabouts of Vellard’s ‘Juruena’ to be, which he had speculated to be the headwaters of the rio Juruena, in the Chapada dos Parecis, c.400 km north-west of Cuiabá. Remarkably little has been published on the habits and ecology of Cone-billed Tanager; such remarks will be published elsewhere.