402 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



Lower back and rump dull ochre, shaded with greyish brown. Upper 

 tail-coverts tawny, with creamy buff edges. 



Tail : Rectrices dark reddish brown in the center, with creamy buff 

 edges. 



Wings : The smaller coverts round the shoulder cinnamon chestnut. 

 The median coverts pale ochre or dull corn-color, with creamy buff or 

 whitish edges, giving a streaked appearance. Greater coverts similar, 

 but many of them with much bright chestnut on their inner webs. 

 Bastard wing and primary coverts cinnamon-chestnut at their extremi- 

 ties and black at their bases. Quills black, strongly frosted with grey and 

 with broad chestnut tips. The first primary often, but not always, creamy 

 or white on its outer edge. The amount of chestnut increasing on the 

 secondaries, the innermost of which are chestnut, with dusky bases and 

 creamy buff margins, giving a striped appearance similar to that of the 

 scapulars. 



Lower parts : The under neck as described. The breast yellower in 

 ground color, and streaked with deeper corn-color, many of the feathers 

 having narrow mid lines of blackish, shading into chestnut. This is most 

 apparent on the sides and flanks. On each side of the breast a series 

 of elongated pendant plume feathers, blackish brown in the center and 

 with broad creamy margins ; the two colors being separated by a narrow 

 bright chestnut line, abrupt on the black area and shading into the creamy 

 one. Under wing-coverts and axillaries white, with buffy suffusions, the 

 latter with ashy bases. 



Legs and feet : Pale yellowish green. 



Bill : Golden yellow, shading into pale yellowish green at base, which 

 color prevails on the bare skin about the eye. 



Iris : Pale straw-color. 



Adults do not vary with the different seasons of the year. 



Geographical Range. — Paraguay, Southern Brazil, Chili and Northern 

 Patagonia. 



The variegated Least Bittern was not obtained or recorded by the 

 naturalists of the Princeton Expeditions ; the range of the bird being 

 restricted to a part of Patagonia not visited. Princeton University has a 

 single male bird and this, with some six specimens in the British Museum 

 of Natural History, has afforded a basis for the description given above. 



"This tiny Heron, so similar to our own A. exilis, seems to be a rather 



