552 . MANUAL OF PHILIPPINE BIRDS. 
535. GEOKICHLA MINDANENSIS Mearns. 
MINDANAO GROUND THRUSH, 
Geocichla mindanensis MrarM@ nil, Jour. Sci. (1907), 2, sec. A, 359. 
Mindanao (Mearns). 
“Description of type (and only specimen).—Upper surface, including 
head, dark ashen gray closely resembling the shade of the same parts in 
Geocichla cinerea Bourns and Worcester; feathers of the back edged with 
black; scapulars with black spots occupying the tip of the web on the 
upper side; wing and tail+feathers shaded with brown and crossed by 
obsolete, wavy bars of darker; lores, eyelids, ear-coverts, and cheeks 
cinereous finely mixed with pale fawn-color, the malar region being 
eross-banded with black and fawn and the ear-coverts longitudinally 
striped with white; chin and throat white, narrowly cross-banded with 
black and bordered by black stripes; pectoral region plain cinereous-ash 
with pale shafts to the feathers; lower chest and flanks black and white, 
each feather heavily margined with jet-black inclosing a sharply pointed 
white spot; middle of abdomen white; crissum white, faintly washed 
with buff which is strongest on the lower tail-coverts; under side of 
wing-quills broadly white on inner border at base; edge of wing white; 
axillars white at base, broadly black at tip; under wing-coverts black, 
tipped with white and pale cream-color; upper wing-coverts without 
white spots. Length, 230; wing, 125; tail, 78; culmen (chord), 35; 
bill from nostril, 19; tarsus, 32; middle toe with claw, 30. 
“This species was occasionally seen as it darted through the mossy 
forest or alighted upon the ground; but it was so shy that only a single 
specimen was shot, although its loud, sweet song was frequently heard 
at morning and evening.” (Mearns.) 
Genus ZOOTHERA Vigors, 1831. . 
“In the genus Zoothera the sexes are alike, the under wing-coverts 
and axillars of two colors, the colors in the one part transposed or reversed ; 
in the other, the lowér plumage squamated, not distinctly barred nor 
spotted, and the rictal bristles very long and numerous. The anterior 
or supplementary bristles extend over the nostrils as in the flyeatchers, 
and Zoothera is the only genus of thrushes in which this feature is 
present. The bill is very long and strongly curved near the tip, and the 
edges of the mandible are frequently serrated by wear and tear, but never 
originally so.” (Oates.) 
