TjENIQPTERA CORONATA. 115 



it irksome to do so ; but I have seen the T. irupero occupy the same 

 perch for hours every day while looking out for insects. 



As an English generic name for this small interesting group might be 

 useful, I would suggest Ground-gazers or Ground-watchers, which 

 describes the peculiar preying-habit of these birds. 



The Pepoaza is a swift, active, graceful bird, with a strong, straight 

 beak, hooked at the point, and a broad tail four inches long, the total 

 length of the bird being nine inches. The throat and space between the 

 beak and eye are white ; all the rest of the body, also the wing- and tail- 

 coverts, light grey ; tail and wing-quills black, with a pure white band 

 across the base of the primaries. The tertiaries and rectriees are 

 tipped with pale rufous grey. 



It inhabits Brazil south of the equator, Bolivia and Paraguay, also the 

 northern provinces of the Argentine Republic. Mr. Barrows gives the 

 following account of its lively habits in Entrerios : " They are commonly 

 seen perched on fences or the tops of bushes or trees in open ground, 

 frequently making sallies for winged insects, or dropping to the ground 

 to catch a grasshopper or worm. When shot at while perched and 

 watching you, they almost invariably leave the perch at the flash, 

 pitching forward and downward, and usually evading the shot, even at 

 short range. Several times I have secured them by shooting about a 

 foot below and two feet in front of them as they sat, but they do not 

 always fly in this direction. The rapidity of their flight when frightened, 

 or when quarrelling, is simply astonishing. I have seen one chase 

 another for three or four minutes, doubling, turning, twisting, and 

 shooting, now brushing the grass, and now rising to a height of at 

 least two or three hundred feet, and all the movements so rapid that 

 the eye could scarcely follow them ; and at the end of it each would go 

 back to the top of his own chosen weed-stalk, apparently without a 

 feather ruffled." 



Azara found this species breeding in a hole in a bank ; and Mr. Dal- 

 gleish has described a nest, taken from a tree in Uruguay, as a somewhat 

 slight structure, four inches in diameter, formed of sticks and fibres, 

 lined with fine grass and a few feathers. It contained three eggs, 

 pear-shaped, white, with large well-defined spots of reddish brown. 



113. TJENIOPTERA CORONATA (Vieill.). 

 (BLACK-CROWNED TYRANT.) 



Tsenioptera coronata, Burm. La-Plata Reise, ii. p. 459 ; Scl. et Salv, Nomencl. 

 p. 42 ; Durnford, Ibis, 1877, p. 176 (Buenos Ayres) ; White, P. Z. S. 1882, 



