406 



TROPICAL AMERICA AND ITS ANIMALS 



eastern Argentina. The banded tinamu (0. noctivagus) is a well-known repre- 

 sentative of the second genus. These and the other smaller representatives of the 

 group are commonly known in South America as partridges, but the great tinamu 

 or martinetta (Rhynchotus rufescens) of Brazil and Argentina, together with the 

 Bolivian R. maculicollis, is designated a pheasant, on account of its greatly superior 

 size. In common with the other members of the family Tinamidce, this bird 

 lays beautifully glazed and porcelain-like eggs. These are of a wine-red colour in 

 this particular species, but in Nothurus they are purple-red or wine-colour, while in 

 some of the other species they are blue. The other genera of the four-toed section 

 are Nothoprocta, with eight species, and ranging from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile 

 to north-western Argentina ; Notlmra, with seven species, of which the collective 

 range extends from Bolivia and southern Brazil to Patagonia ; and Taoniscus, 



represented only by 

 the dwarf tinamu (I 7 . 

 nanus) of eastern 

 Brazil and Para- 

 guay. Of the second 

 genus the spotted 

 tinamu (Notlmra 

 maculosa) of Argen- 

 tina and southern 

 Brazil, and Darwin's 

 tinamu (X da r- 

 wini) of Argentina 

 and Patagonia, are 

 two of the best 

 known representa- 

 tives. 



Of the three- 

 toed tinamus there 

 are two genera, Calo- 

 vezus, with a single 

 species from Argen- 

 tina and Patagonia, and Tinamotis, in which Pentland's tinamu (T. pentlandi), 

 is a native of Ecuador, Peru, and Chile, while T. ingoriji is a native of eastern 

 Patagonia. 



Tinamus are essentially ground-birds, showing a great disinclination to fly, 

 and when on the wing flying with a slow and heavy flight. They have plaintive, 

 flute-like notes, that of the martinetta being especially loud. 



The rheas, or American ostriches, form a special group of the 

 ostrich-like, or flightless, birds. They are most familiarly known by 

 the typical Argentine species, or nandu (Rhea americana), formerly abundant on the 

 pampas of Uruguay and Argentina. Here they live in family parties comprising a 

 cock, which attends to the incubation and nursing of the young, and about half a 

 dozen hens which lay their yellowish-white eggs, some twenty in number, in the 

 same nest. Rheas are caught by the bolas from horseback, or hunted with dogs 



SOLITARY TINAMU. 



Rhea. 



