Wood Warblers 



8u 



coverts, lower part of the body, tibia, and front margin of the wing, which are 

 a fine crocus-yellow; the length is about eight inches. TheMamo was probably 

 never very abundant, and according to Mr. 

 Henshaw there is every reason to believe 

 that it is now extinct, the last ones having 

 been seen alive in 1898 and 1899. Con- 

 tinuing, Mr. Henshaw says: "We know next 

 to nothing of the habits of the Mamo. The 

 birds I saw on Kanmana were very active and 

 evidently were in pursuit of insects which they 

 were hunting on the very tops of the tall 

 ohias. The birds' flight from tree to tree 

 was not rapid, but was smooth and well sus- 

 tained, and the bird on the wing reminded 

 me of nothing so much as a Cuckoo. Though 

 I observed the birds at intervals for more 

 than two hours, I did not hear a single note." 



Akepeuie. The smallest and at the same time the most beautiful and highly 

 colored members of the group belong to the genus Loxops, which has already 

 been noted as that in which the lower mandible is slightly twisted either to the 

 right or left. In the best-known species, known to the natives as the Akepeuie 

 (L. coccinea), the male has the upper plumage scarlet-orange and the lower 

 parts cadmium-orange, while the female is olive-green above and gamboge- 

 yellow beneath; the length is four and a half inches. 



FlG. 225. Mamo, Drepanis pacifica. 



THE WOOD WARBLERS 



(Family Mniotillida) 



This family is exclusively American, taking the place in the New World filled 

 by the true Warblers and Flycatchers of the Old World. They number about 

 thirty genera and two hundred species, and are all small oscinine or so-called 

 singing birds, with nine primaries, slender or flat bills, rather pointed wings, 

 and rounded tails. They differ from the Honey Creepers in having the tongue 

 but slightly if at all bifid or fimbriate, and from the Wagtails and Pipits in the 

 absence of the elongated hind claw. Of their general characteristics and ap- 

 pearance Ridgway says: " The Wood Warblers are essentially most of them 

 strictly insectivorous birds, of active habits. Most of them are arboreal, 

 nesting and feeding among trees and rarely descending to the ground ; some are 

 terrestrial, living much upon or near the ground, where they walk in the graceful, 

 'mincing' manner of a Wagtail or Pipit, meanwhile tilting the body as if upon 

 a pivot and oscillating the tail in the same characteristic manner. Most of them 

 are expert 'flycatchers.' Others creep about the trunks and branches of 

 trees as nimbly as a Nuthatch. The majority of them combine, in various degrees, 

 these several habits. As a rule they are birds of beautiful plumage, though 



