All Rights Reserved. Skptember, 1920. 
BIRD NOTES: 
THE 
JOURNAL OF THE FOREIGN BIRD CLUB. 
The Double-striped Thichnee. 
(Oedicnemus bistriatus). 
By W. Shore Baily. 
The Double-striped Thicknee, so named becaii:e of its 
face markings, is a rare bird in our aviaries. 
A pair came to me from Mr. Rogers last July: un'ortun- 
ately one was sickly and only lived a few days, but the other is a 
very fine bird. In colour they closely resemble our own bird 
{0 edicnenius oedicnemus). but are larger and stand some three 
or four inches taller. 11iere is a greyish-white stripe 
immediately over the eye, with a lirownish-black stripe of about 
twice the width over this. In the European bird the white 
stripe is below the eye, the throat and cheeks also being white. 
These parts in the American Thicknee are uniform in colour 
with the rest of the body. 
Tt is very shy and spends most of the daylight hours 
hiding in the undergrowth, being quite as clever at taking cover 
as our partridge. When disturbed it ru'is very swiftly, uttering 
a low and complaining kind of grunt. In the evening it wakes 
up and is much more lively, being like our Stone-Curlew in all 
probability a night feeder. Its call is a whistle many times 
repeated, starting in a loud key and rather slowly, but rapidly, 
increasing in speed, it gradually dies away in a much lower note. 
So loud is it when it first starts that I have more than once been 
aroused from sleep, although my bedroom is nearly one 
hundred yards from its aviary. It only calls at night or in the 
late evening. I have only had one bird that could beat it in 
volume of sound, and that was my Cayenne Rail. 
It feeds upon worms and slugs, to which I add biscuit 
meal, bread and mjlk. I think it also takes toll of the mite in 
