Vil PITTIDAE 469 
surface, black and blue head and wings, yellow face and throat, 
and blue tail becoming black below. Serilophus contains two 
grey-brown species with chestnut rumps, ranging from Sikkim to 
Tenasserim. Sarcophanops is peculiar to the Philippines. 
The quiet and solitary Broad-bills inhabit forests, thickets, and 
gardens, flying little, sitting sluggishly on the branches, taking 
insects on the wing, and uttering whisthng or metallic notes. 
They make large roughish oval nests, with a large entrance near 
the top often protected by an overhanging roof, while a sort of tail 
is commonly added; these are suspended from low branches or 
plants close to water; the materials being twigs, roots, tendrils, moss, 
or leaves, felted together and smoothly lined with green fohage, 
flags, bamboo-spathes, or grass, sometimes renewed when dry. 
From three to five eggs are laid, pale yellowish in Calyptomena, 
white or rarely spotted with red in Psarisomus, and pinkish, buff or 
white elsewhere, with markings varying from black to rufous. 
B. Clamatores. 
This group includes the Pittidae, Philepittidae, Xenicidae, Tyran- 
nidae, Oxyrhamphidae, Pipridae, Cotingidae, Phytotomidae, Dendro- 
colaptidae, Formicarudae, Conopophagidae, and Pteroptochidae. 
Apparently the furcula is U-shaped; the tongue varies; the 
aftershaft is small, if present ; the down is sparing or absent. 
Fam. I. Pittidae.—The members of this Old World Family, 
nearly fifty in number, range from India to North China, East 
Austraha, New Guinea, and New Britain; while one species is West 
African, They are stout, strong-billed forms, with short rounded 
wings and tail, the long metatarsus being more or less scutellated 
all round; the primaries number ten—the outer being decidedly 
long—the secondaries eight, the rectrices twelve. The plumage 
exhibits vivid scarlet, blue, and green tints, in addition to yellow, 
purple, black, brown, and white; elongated neck-feathers occur 
in Anthocincla, erect frontal plumes in Coracopitta. The tail in 
Pitta is nearly square, but is pointed in Hucichla and Coracopitta. 
The habits seem to be fairly uniform, all the species haunting 
thickish jungle or dense scrub, whether in the rock-strewn glens 
of India, or the damp Malayan, Australian, and Papuasian forests. 
The birds are more often heard than seen, though the plaintive, 
oft-repeated double whistle of the smaller forms, or the mournful, 
triple cry of the larger, is seldom audible in the mid-day heat, 
