Wood Hewers 631 



not protracted for any great distance.. In distribution they are characteristic 

 of the temperate western and southern portions of South America, from western 

 Peru through Chile and Bolivia to Argentina and Patagonia. All feed on fruits, 

 buds, tender shoots, and leaves. 



The Red-breasted Plant Cutter (P. rutila) of the two last-mentioned countries 

 is lead-colored above, the feathers with darker shaft spots, while the wings and 

 tail are black, and the crown, as well as the lower parts, deep brick-red; the 

 wings have also a broad white band. This species, Mr. Hudson says, is usually 

 seen singly, but sometimes in small flocks, and is a resident where found. " The 

 male is frequently seen perched on the summit of a bush, and, amidst the dull- 

 plumaged species that people the gray thickets of Patagonia, the bright red 

 bosom gives it almost a gay appearance." The nest of this species is made 

 in the interior of a thorny bush and is a slight structure of fine twigs 

 lined with fibers. The eggs are four in number, bluish green with fine 

 brownish spots. 



The Chilean Plant Cutter (P. rara] is a plainer-colored bird, being brown, 

 streaked with black above and dull rufous beneath, and the wings and tail black, 

 the former with white edgings on the secondaries, and the latter with a dark 

 rufous band on the inner webs of the lateral feathers. It is this species that is 

 particularly destructive; it nests in the tops of high trees. 



THE WOOD HEWERS 



(Family Dendrocolaptidce) 



Under the collective name of Wood Hewers there is aggregated a consider- 

 able group of typical neotropical birds numbering about one hundred species, dis- 

 posed among some twelve genera, which may be taken as representing the Wood- 

 peckers in the mesomyodian series. They are small or medium-sized birds, few 

 exceeding ten inches in length and many falling between six and eight inches, 

 in which the prevailing color is brown in various shades and tints, the tail in a 

 large proportion being a uniform chestnut or ferruginous, while quite uniformly 

 the breast and often the head and back are relieved by buff or whitish spots or 

 shaft streaks. In the form of the tail-feathers the Wood Hewers especially 

 simulate the Woodpeckers, these being stiffened and spiny, and serving to press 

 them against the trunks of trees about which they climb, and thus prevent their 

 slipping downward. The structure of the feet adapts them to the same office 

 as those of the Woodpeckers, though in quite a different manner, for while not 

 zygodactylous, they have the three toes closely bound together for the whole length 

 of the basal phalanx, while the outer toe is nearly as long as the middle one, 

 and considerably longer than the innermost toe; the claws are rather long and 

 sharpened. The bill while usually strong is not especially marked, being as a 

 rule curved and in some forms is extraordinarily long and quite slender. 

 Although they often tap and hammer on the bark or wood, they do not chisel 



