46 PICARIAN BIRDS. 



well." Mr. O. N. Aplin found the eggs of this species in Uruguay ; they were of 

 a creamy pink colour, delicately marked with lines and veins of pinkish lilac, 

 something after the manner of bunting's eggs. " On the 17th of March," he writes, 

 " I saw a male with the long tail-feathers settle on a post of a wire fence which 

 passed through part of the nionte ; ^ it sat lengthwise to the line of fence. The 

 curious long swallow-tail of the male does not seem to incommode it at all, as the 

 bird can turn and twist about in its rapid gliding flight in a wonderful way, and 

 accomplishes the difficult aerial navigation of the thorny nionte with all the ease 

 and grace of our nightjar in an oak-wood." 



Nacunda Night- The single representative of this genus {Podager nacimda) 



J^- difiers from all the preceding, in the slight development of the 



bristles of the gape, as well as by the shortness of the tail, which only equals 

 about half the length of the wing. The general plumage is of the usual mottled 

 hue, but the tail is distinctly barred ; while the primary quills are conspicuously 

 white, and the secondaries lighter brown, with blackish brown bars and vermi- 

 culations ; the central tail-feathers being like the back, with broad white tips to 

 the outer ones ; the abdomen and under tail-coverts white ; the lores and upper 

 throat reddish, with blackish brown bars ; the chin almost uniform rust-colour ; 

 and the lower throat very dark brown, the breast being similar to the upper- 

 parta The length is 11^ inches. Mr. W. H. Hudson writes that "the specific 

 name of this goatsucker is from the Guarane word ndcundd, which Azara tells 

 us is the Indian nickname for any person with a very large moutL In the 

 Argentine country it has several names, being called dormibu (sleepy-head), or 

 duerme-duerme (sleep-sleep), also gallina liega (blind hen). It is a large handsome 

 bird, and differs from its congeners in being gregarious, and in never perching 

 on trees or entering woods. It is an inhabitant of the open pampas. In Buenos 

 Aires and also in Paraguay, according to Azara, it is a summer visitor, arriving 

 at the end of September and leaving at the end of February. In the love-season, 

 the male is sometimes heard uttering a song or call, with notes of a hollow 

 mysterious character ; at other times they are absolutely silent, except when dis- 

 turbed in the daj'time, and then each bird, when taking flight, emits the syllable 

 kuf in a hollow voice. When flushed, the bird rushes away with a wild, zigzag 

 flight, close to the ground, then suddenly drops like a stone, disappearing at the 

 same moment from sight as effectually as if the earth had swallowed it up, so 

 perfect is the protective resemblance in the colouring of the upper plumage to the 

 ground. In the evening, they begin to fly about earlier than most Caprimulgi, 

 hawking after insects like swallows, skimming over the surface of the ground and 

 water with a swift, irregular flight ; possibly the habit of sitting in open places, 

 ■exposed to the full glare of the sun, has made them somewhat less nocturnal than 

 ■other species that seek the shelter of thick woods or herbage during the hours of 

 light. After the breeding-season they are sometimes found in flocks of forty or 

 fifty individuals, and will spend months on the same spot, returning to it in equal 

 numbers every year. One summer a flock of about two hundred individuals 

 frequented a meadow near my house, and one day I observed them rise up very 

 ■early in the evening and begin soaring about like a troop of swallows preparing to 



^ The Argentine term for the small woods surrounding so many of the settlements on the pampas. 



