328 Mr. W. A. Forbes on Eleven Weeks 



4. DONACOBIUS ATRICAPILLUS. 



This bird I first observed from the train on the railway 

 between Cabo and Una, frequenting the marshy bottoms of 

 the valleys. I subsequently saw it at Cabo^ and found it 

 more or less abundant in suitable situations all along my 

 route thence to Macuca. It is a very noisy bird^ with a loud 

 chattering cry. It flies about in small companies of three or 

 four, and is found among the marshy vegetation that grows 

 along the banks of the streams. The bird is a very conspi- 

 cuous one, both owing to its noisy cry and the habit it has 

 of fluttering its short and rounded wings, when the white bar 

 at the base of the primaries forms a very much more striking 

 mark than would be imagined from the skins. I heard the 

 name '' Casaca do Couro,^' signifying " Leathern Jacket," 

 applied to this bird by a Brazilian friend who had paid some 

 attention to animals ; but whether it is the same bird as that 

 mentioned by Capt. Burton ('Highlands of Brazil,' ii. p. 316) 

 under the same name, and noticed by him on account of its 

 remarkable nest, I do not know. I never saw Donacobius 

 nesting. ( As mentioned by Burmeister (Thiere Bras. ii. p. 130) 

 there is a narrow naked space, about an inch long, on the 

 neck of this bird, behind the angle of the jaw, which shows 

 conspicuously in the shot bird. It is coloured bright chrome- 

 yellow (Burmeister says " fleischroth ") , and with the bright 

 yellow irides makes a freshly shot Donacobius a far more 

 ""1 beautiful object than one that is skinned. This brightly 

 coloured nude space is probably present in both sexes, as the 

 only specimen I procured was a female, I do not at present 

 recall any precisely similar case of ornamentation by a bright 

 nude skin-space on this part of the neck in any other bird — 

 certainly not in any other Passerine. The feet are grey. 



5. Troglodytes furvus. 

 This is the common Wren of the country, and is very 



abundant everywhere in the neighbourhood of houses or 

 gardens, though it is not much of a forest-bird. It has 

 a remarkably strong song for such a small bird, and may | 

 often be seen perched on the roofs of the houses of the 



