190 DENDROCOLAPTID^:. 



where it is placed are a favourite resort all the year round. Here the 

 birds sit perched a great deal, and repeat at intervals a song or call, 

 composed of four or five loud ticking chirps, followed by a long trilling 

 note. They feed exclusively on the ground, where they creep about, 

 carrying the body horizontally and intently searching for insects. 

 When disturbed, they hurry to their usual refuge, rapidly beating their 

 very feeble wings, and expanding the broad acuminated tail like a fan. 

 When the male and female meet at their nest, after a brief separation, 

 they sing their notes in concert, as if rejoicing over their safe reunion ; 

 but they seldom separate, and Azara says that when one incubates, the 

 other sits at the entrance to the nest, and that when one returns to the 

 nest with food for the young the other accompanies it, though it has 

 found nothing to carry. 



To build, the Anumbi makes choice of an isolated tree in an open 

 situation, and prefers a dwarf tree with very scanty foliage ; for small 

 projecting twigs and leaves hinder the worker when carrying up sticks. 

 This is a most laborious operation, as the sticks are large and the bird's 

 flight is feeble. If the tree is to its liking, it matters not how much 

 exposed to the winds it may be, or how close to a human habitation, for 

 the bird is utterly unconcerned by the presence of man. I have fre- 

 quently seen a nest in a shade or ornamental tree within ten yards of the 

 main entrance to a house ; and I have also seen several on the tall upright 

 stakes of a horse-corral, and the birds working quietly, with a herd of 

 half-wild horses rushing round the enclosure beneath them, pursued by 

 the men with lassos. The bird uses large sticks for building, and drops 

 a great many ; frequently as much fallen material as would fill a 

 barrow lies under the tree. The fallen stick is not picked up again, as 

 the bird could not rise vertically with its load, and is not intelligent 

 enough, I suppose, to recover the fallen stick, and to carry it away 

 thirty yards from the tree and then rise obliquely. It consequently 

 goes far afield in quest of a fresh one, and having got one to its liking, 

 carefully takes it up exactly by the middle, arid, carrying it like a 

 balancing-pole, returns to the nest, where, if one end happens to hit 

 against a projecting twig, it drops like the first. The bird is not dis- 

 couraged, but, after a brief interview with its mate, flies cheerfully 

 away to gather more wood. 



Durnford writes wonderingly of the partiality for building in poplar 

 trees shown by this bird in Buenos Ayres, and says that in a tall tree 

 the nest is sometimes placed sixty or seventy feet above the ground, 

 and that the bird almost invariably rises with a stick at such a distance 

 from the tree as to be able just to make the nest, but that sometimes 

 failing it alights further down, and then climbs up the twigs with its 



