SCARLET TYRANT 183 



for the Churinche, but speak of it as a bird wonderful 

 for its beauty and seldom seen. Amongst the dull- 

 plumaged Patagonian species it certainly has a very 

 brilliant appearance, 



A very few days after their arrival the Churinches 

 pair ; and the male selects a spot for the nest a fork 

 in a tree from six to twelve feet from the ground, 

 or sometimes a horizontal bough. This spot the male 

 visits about once a minute, sits on it with his splendid 

 crest elevated, tail spread out, and wings incessantly 

 fluttering, while he pours out a continuous stream of 

 silvery gurgling notes, so low they can scarcely be 

 heard twenty paces off, and somewhat resembling the 

 sound of water running from a narrow-necked flask, 

 but more musical and infinitely more rapid. Of the 

 little bird's homely, grey, silent mate the observer 

 will scarcely obtain a glimpse, she appearing as yet 

 to take little or no interest in the affairs that so much 

 occupy the attention of her consort, and keep him 

 in a state of such violent excitement. He is exceed- 

 ingly pugnacious, so that when not fluttering on the 

 site of his future nest, or snapping up some insect 

 on the wing, he is eagerly pursuing other male 

 Churinches, apparently bachelors, from tree to tree. 

 At intervals he repeats his remarkable little song, 

 composed of a succession of sweetly modulated 

 metallic trills uttered on the wing. The bird usually 

 mounts upwards from thirty to forty yards, and, 

 with wings very much raised and rapidly vibrating, 

 rises and drops almost perpendicularly half a yard's 

 space five or six times, appearing to keep time to 



