222 BIRDS OF LA PLATA 
cardoon-bush or tussock it scoops out a slight hollow 
in the ground, and builds over this a dome of fine 
dry grass, leaving a small aperture arched like the 
door of a baker’s oven. The bed is lined with dry 
powdered horse-dung, and the eggs are five, bluntly 
pointed and of a very pale buff colour. The interior 
of the nest is so small that when the five young birds 
are fledged they appear to be packed together very 
closely, so that it is difficult to conceive how the 
parent bird passes in and out. 
The nest is always very cunningly concealed, and 
I have often spent days searching in a patch of 
cardoon-bushes where the birds were breeding 
without being able to find it. Something more will 
be said about the nesting-habits of this species in 
the account of the Carrion-hawk, Milvago chimango. 
WREN-LIKE SPINE-TAIL 
Synallaxis maluroides 
Above, front and middle of crown chestnut ; hind head, neck, and 
back pale fulvous brown, thickly marked with longitudinal black shaft- 
spots; lores white; wings blackish, the feathers edged with pale 
ochraceous, the basal part of secondaries very pale brown, forming a 
transverse bar; tail pale chestnut-brown, the two middle feathers with 
a broad black mark on the inner web; beneath white, breast and flanks 
washed with pale brown, and freckled with very small dark brown 
spots; under wing-coverts white; length 6.1 inches. 
D’OrBIGNY discovered this small Spine-tail near 
Buenos Ayres city, but did not record its habits. 
Like the species just described it is abundant on the 
