520 BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAK. 
sits conspicuously on some lofty bough, below the summit of the tree, 
and raising his head, and swelling his throat with a rising motion, 
almost amounting to a flutter, he appears truly rapt in ecstacy, and seems 
to enjoy his own powers of melody as much as the listener. Even the 
cruel naturalist, ever eager to add another trophy to his favourite 
science, feels arrested by his appeal, and connives at his escape from 
the clutch of the collector. 
“ About the month of July, in the Rocky Mountains, I observed the 
female feeding her fledged young, and they also spent the summer in 
the thickest branches, but with the nest and eggs I am unacquainted. 
The song, as I have heard it, in the forests of Columbia, seems to be 
like the sylables "tait, weet, teet, weowit, teet weowitt, teet weeowit, verr, and 
sometimes terminating weet, weet, weet, every note a loud tender trill of 
the utmost sweetness, delivered in his own ‘* wood-notes wild,” mock- 
ing nothing, but still exulting in his powers, which, while exerted, seem 
to silence every songster around. The Robin seems almost his pupil 
in song and similarity of expression, but falls short, and after our 
Orpheus, seems at best but a faultering scholar.” 
GUIRACA MELANOCEPHALA, Swainson. 
Adult Male. Plate CCCLXXIII. Figs. 2, 3. 
Bill rather short, very robust, bulging at the base, conical, acute ; 
upper mandible with its dorsal outline a little convex, the sides rounded, 
the edges sharp, ascending from the base to beyond the nostrils, then de- 
flected with a slight median festoon, and an obscure notch close to the 
tip; lower mandible with the angle short and very broad, the dorsal 
line straight, the back very broad at the base, the sides high and con- 
vex, the edges inflected, the tip acute. Nostrils basal, roundish, partly 
concealed by the feathers. 
Head large, roundish-ovate ; neck short ; body rather full. Legs of 
moderate length, rather strong ; tarsus anteriorly covered with seven 
scutella, posteriorly with two plates forming a sharp edge ; toes rather 
large, the first stout, the lateral nearly equal, the middle toe much 
longer. Claws rather long, arched, much compressed, acute. 
Plumage soft and blended. Wings of moderate length, broad. 
The first quill two-twelfths shorter than the second, which is longest, 
