Oven-birds and Allies 633 



" As to the habits of the Wood-Hewers, not much seems to be known, and the 

 little that is on record is of a very general or vague character. They climb up 

 or down the trunks of trees in the manner of true Creepers (CertkUdai), often 

 spirally, and like the Creepers after ascending to the top of one tree-trunk, fly 

 to the base of another, which is ascended in the same fashion. The position in 

 climbing is always upright, as in the case of the Creepers, never inverted as is 

 the habit of Nuthatches. According to Dr. Richmond, the Dendrocolaptida 

 may nearly always be found among the miscellaneous congregation of birds 

 attracted by processions of the army ant, upon which, together with various 

 insects which they start from their hiding places, they feed with avidity. Their 

 notes are usually harsh, often notably so. They breed usually in holes of trees, 

 after the fashion of Woodpeckers, though a nest of Glyphorhynehus cuneatus 

 found by Dr. Richmond was in a small natural cavity at the foot of a tree, not 

 more than ten inches from the ground ; it contained two eggs, which were pure 

 white in color." RIDGWAY. 



THE OVEN-BIRDS AND ALLIES 



(Family FurnariidcB) 



The present family, perhaps most typified by the Oven-birds, comprises a 

 very large, exclusively neotropical group of nearly five hundred species of small 

 nondescript birds, which resemble in many respects the members of the last 

 family. This resemblance is so strong, in fact, that it has often been taken as a 

 mark of kinship, and the two groups united under the name of the Dendro- 

 colaptidcB, but evidence has been accumulating which tends to prove their dis- 

 tinctness. Thus they differ, apparently universally, in having schizorhinal in- 

 stead of holorhinal nostrils, while the outer toe is not conspicuously longer than 

 the inner one, and all three anterior toes are coherent for much less than the 

 full length of their basal phalanges, the characters of the feet being such as to 

 permit their separation from the Wood Hewers at a glance. 



The Oven-birds (Furnarius), so called from the curious nest structures they 

 build, number upward of a dozen species and spread widely over South America 

 from Panama to Argentina. They range in size between five and seven inches 

 and are clad in plumages of clear browns and white, one of the best-known 

 being the Red Oven-bird (F. rufus) of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. 

 This bird, says Mr. Hudson, "is an extremely well-known species in Argentina 

 and where found is a great favorite on account of its familiarity with man, its 

 loud, ringing, cheerful voice, and its wonderful mud nest, which it prefers to 

 build near a human habitation. ... In favorable seasons the Oven-birds begin 

 building in the autumn, and the work is resumed during the winter, whenever 

 there is a spell of mild, wet weather. Some of their structures are finished early 

 in winter, others not until spring, everything depending on the weather and the 

 condition of the birds. In cold, dry weather, and when food is scarce the birds 

 do not work at all. The site chosen is a stout, horizontal branch, or the top of 



