36 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



The male is a fascinating little bird, coal-black above, 

 while his crested head and the body beneath are brilliant 

 scarlet. He utters his rapid, low-voiced musical trill 

 in the air, rising with fluttering wings to a height of a 

 hundred feet, hovering while he sings, and then falling 

 back to earth. The color of the bird and the character 

 of his performance attract the attention of every ob- 

 server, bird, beast, or man, within reach of vision. 



The red-backed tyrant is utterly unlike any of his 

 kind in the United States, and until I looked him up in 

 Sclater and Hudson's ornithology I never dreamed that 

 he belonged to this family. He — for only the male is 

 so brightly colored — is coal-black with a dull-red back. 

 I saw these birds on December 1 near Barilloche, out on 

 the bare Patagonian plains. They behaved like pipits 

 or longspurs, running actively over the ground in the 

 same manner and showing the same restlessness and the 

 same kind of flight. But whereas pipits are inconspicu- 

 ous, the red-backs at once attracted attention by the con- 

 trast between their bold coloring and the grayish or yel- 

 lowish tones of the ground along which they ran. The 

 silver-bill tyrant, however, is much more conspicuous; I 

 saw it in the same neighborhood as the red-back and also 

 in many other places. The male is jet-black, with white 

 bill and wings. He runs about on the ground like a 

 pipit, but also frequently perches on some bush to go 

 through a strange flight-song performance. He perches 

 motionless, bolt upright, and even then his black coloring 

 advertises him for a quarter of a mile round about. 

 But every few minutes he springs up into the air to the 

 height of twenty or thirty feet, the white wings flashing 



