270 
CLIMBING- LEAFLOVK 
Phyllastrephis scandcns, Swains. 
PLATE XXX. 
Olive above ; fiilvous white beneath ; crown, ears and front, 
light cinerous ; quills, rump and tail, ferruginous ; frontal 
feathers short, rather stiff, and advancing on the bill ; 
claws broad and much crooked. 
Le Vaillant, whose remarks on the habits of the 
birds he procured in Southern Africa are always 
interesting and often valuable, describes, under the 
name of Le Jaloteur*, a very singular thrush, 
plain in colour, but curious in its economy. It lives 
in little parties of five or six, which he always found 
busily employed in exploring the ground under 
close and entangled thickets, turning over the dead 
leaves, both with the bill and feet, in search of 
worms and ground-insects ; each individual of the 
party keeping up a querulous note of its own, dif- 
ferent from that of each of its companions. These 
birds were rarely seen to perch ; while, from being 
almost hid in such situations, and the colour of 
their plumage so exactly agreeing with that of the 
withered leaves around them, they were very diffi- 
cult to procure. 
The bird we are now to describe is certainly 
* Ois. d’Afrique, ii. pi. 112, tig. 1, (Pli. terrestris, Swains). 
