552 MANUAL OF PHILIPPINE BIRDS. 



535. GEOKICHLA MINDANENSIS Mearns. 



MINDANAO GROUND THRUSH. 



Geocichla mindanensis MEARNS, Phil. 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 cinerca 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 

 cross-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 lower 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 flycatchers, 

 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.) 



