326 



SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS. — PASSE RES— OSCINES. 



toe for about two-thirds its length, with inner toe for about half its length. Body stout. Head 

 conspicuously crested. Plumage peculiarly soft, smooth, and silky. Tail tipped with yellow 

 (or red, in the Japanese A. phoenicoptera). Sexes alike; young different. Eggs spotted. 

 Nest on trees. 



A. gar'rulus. (Lat. garrulus, a jay-bird: from its loquacity. Fig. 185.) Bohemian Wax- 

 \viN(4. $ 9 ) adult: General color brownish-ash, shading insensibly from the clear ash of the 

 tail and its upper coverts and rump into a reddish-tinged ash anteriorly, this peculiar tint 

 heightening on the head, especially on the forehead and sides of the head, into orange-brown. 

 A narrow frontal line, and broader bar through the eye, with the chin and throat, sooty-black, 

 not or not sharply bordered M'ith white. No yellowish on belly. Under tail-coverts orange- 

 brown, or chestnut. Tail ash, deepening to blackish-ash toward the end, broadly tipped with 



Fig. 185. — Bobemian Waxwings, ^ nat. size. (From Brebm.) 

 rich yellow. Wings ashy-blackish ; primaries tipped (chiefly on the outer webs) with sharp 

 spaces of yellow, or white, or both ; secondaries with white spaces at the ends of the outer webs, 

 the shafts usually ending with enlarged, horny, red appendages. Primary coverts tipped with 

 white. Bill blackish-plumbeous, often paler at base below ; feet black. Length 7 or 8 inches ; 

 wing about 4.50 ; tail 2.50. The sexes of this beautiful bird are alike, and the principal varia- 

 tions, aside from mere shade of the body-color, consist in the markings of the wings. In the 

 finest specimens, the ends of the primary quills are rich yellow, like the tips of the tail-feathers, 

 forming broad firm spaces, in a continuous line when the wing is closed, with narrower offsets 

 going around the ends of the quills. In less perfect specimens, these markings are simply 

 white, are less firm, and do not appear on all the quills. The secondaries may or may not 

 show the red ''sealing-wax" tips, but in adult birds at least probably always show white 



