SCARLET TYRANT 183 
for the Churinche, but speak of it as a bird wonderful 
for its beauty and seldom seen. Amongst the dull- 
plumaged Patagonian species it certainly has a very 
brilliant appearance. 
A very few days after their arrival the Churinches 
pair ; and the male selects a spot for the nest—a fork 
in a tree from six to twelve feet from the ground, 
or sometimes a horizontal bough. This spot the male 
visits about once a minute, sits on it with his splendid 
crest elevated, tail spread out, and wings incessantly 
fluttering, while he pours out a continuous stream of 
silvery gurgling notes, so low they can scarcely be 
heard twenty paces off, and somewhat resembling the 
sound of water running from a narrow-necked flask, 
but more musical and infinitely more rapid. Of the 
little bird’s homely, grey, silent mate the observer 
will scarcely obtain a glimpse, she appearing as yet 
to take little or no interest in the affairs that so much 
occupy the attention of her consort, and keep him 
in a state of such violent excitement. He is exceed- 
ingly pugnacious, so that when not fluttering on the 
site of his future nest, or snapping up some insect 
on the wing, he is eagerly pursuing other male 
Churinches, apparently bachelors, from tree to tree. 
At intervals he repeats his remarkable little song, 
composed of a succession of sweetly modulated 
metallic trills uttered on the wing. The bird usually 
mounts upwards from thirty to forty yards, and, 
with wings very much raised and rapidly vibrating, 
rises and drops almost perpendicularly half a yard’s 
space five or six times, appearing to keep time to 
