THINOCORUS RUMICIVORUS. 177 



black, broadly tipped with white, central rectrices like the back : beneath 

 white ; a broad line on each side of the throat uniting in the centre of the 

 neck and expanding into a collar on the breast black ; sides of neck greyish ; 

 bill dark brown ; feet yellow ; claws black : whole length 6-5 inches, wing 3'9, 

 tail 1 9. Female: above like the male: beneath white, sides of neck and 

 breast brown varied with blackish, with slight traces only of the black bar. 



Hob. Western Peru, Bolivia, Chili, Patagonia, and Argentina. 



This curious bird has the grey upper plumage and narrow, long, 

 sharply-pointed wings of a Snipe, with the plump body and short 

 strong curved beak of a Partridge. But the gallinaceous beak is not 

 in this species correlated, as in the Partridges, with stout rasorial feet ; 

 on the contrary, the legs and feet are extremely small and feeble, and 

 scarcely able to sustain the weight of the body. When alighting the 

 Seed-Snipe drops its body directly upon the ground and sits close like 

 a Goatsucker; when rising it rushes suddenly away with the wild 

 hurried flight and sharp scraping alarm-cry of a Snipe. It is exclu- 

 sively a vegetable-feeder. I have opened the gizzards of many scores 

 to satisfy myself that they never eat insects, and have found nothing in 

 them but seed (usually clover-seed) and tender buds and leaves mixed 

 with minute particles of gravel. 



These birds inhabit Patagonia, migrating north to the pampas in 

 winter, where they arrive in April. They usually go in flocks of about 

 forty or fifty individuals, and fly rapidly, keeping very close together. 

 On the ground, however, they are always much scattered, and are so 

 reluctant to rise that they will allow a person to walk or ride through 

 the flock without taking wing, each bird creeping into a little hollow 

 in the surface or behind a tuft of grass to escape observation. During 

 its winter sojourn on the pampas the flock always selects as a feeding- 

 ground a patch of whitish argillaceous earth, with a scanty withered 

 vegetation ; and here when the birds crouch motionless on the ground, 

 to which their grey plumage so closely assimilates in colour, it is most 

 difficult to detect them. If a person stands still close to or in the midst 

 of the flock the birds will presently betray their presence by answering 

 each other with a variety of strange notes, resembling the cooing of 

 Pigeons, loud taps on a hollow ground, and other mysterious sounds, 

 which seem to come from beneath the earth. 



In the valley of Rio Negro I met with a few of these birds in summer, 

 but could not find their nests. 



Durnford, however, who found them breeding in Chupat at the 

 end of October, tells us that the nest is a slight depression in the 

 ground, sometimes lined with a few blades of grass. " The eggs have 

 a pale stone ground-colour, very thickly but finely speckled with light 



VOL. II. N 



