Order PASSEE.ES.] 
[East. HUSCICAPIDvE. 
RHIPIDURA FULIGINOSA. 
(BLACK F ANT AIL.) 
Muscicapa fuliginosa, Sparrm. Mus. Carls, pi. 47 (1787). 
Muscicapa deserti, Gm. Syst. Nat. i. p. 949 (1788, ex Sparrm.). 
Rhipidura melanura, Gray, in Dieff. Trav., ii. App. p. 191 (1843). 
Leucocerca melanura , Bonap. Consp. Gen. Ay. i. p. 324 (1850). 
Rhipidura tristis, Hombr. et Jacq. Voy. Pole Sud, Ois. iii. p. 76, pi. xi. fig. 5 (185o). 
Rhipidura sombre , iid. op. cit., Atlas, pi. xi. fig. 4 (1853). 
Ad. nigricans, dorso alisque brunneo tinctis : macula postauriculari parva alba : subtus dilutius brunneus : rostro 
nigro, mandibula versus basin albicante : pedibus nigricanti-brunneis : iride nigra. 
Adult. Entire plumage black, tinged on the back and 'wings with rusty brown, and on the under surface with 
paler brown ; behind each ear a small spot of white. Irides black ; bill black, white at the base of the 
lower mandible ; tarsi and toes blackish brown. Total length 6'5 inches ; extent of wings 8 ; wing, from 
flexure, 2’ 75; tail 4; bill, along the ridge *3, along the edge of lower mandible ‘4; tarsus 7; middle toe 
and claw '6 ; hind toe and claw - 5. 
Female. Similar to the male, but with the white spots behind the ears much reduced. 
Obs. In the full-plumaged male the white mark described above usually consists of twelve diminutive feathers. 
In an example which came under my notice at Kaiapoi this feature was exaggerated, the white spreading 
entirely over the ear-coverts and surrounding feathers. In some it is scarcely visible, while in others 
(probably young birds) it is altogether wanting. 
This dark-coloured species is, generally speaking, restricted to the South Island, where it is far more 
common than the preceding one. 
Its life-history differs in no respect from that of its congener, as described in the foregoing pages. 
The stomachs of two which 1 dissected contained, in addition to the remains of small dipterous 
insects, the minute seeds of some wild berry. 
Mr. G. R. Gray gives Cook’s Strait as its habitat ; but although common enough on the Nelson 
side, at the date of my former edition I knew of only one instance of its occurrence on the northern 
shore of the strait, or in any part of the North Island. After very stormy weather in May 1864, I 
shot a specimen in a flax-field near the mouth of the Manawatu river, on the south-west coast of the 
Wellington Province. It was evidently a straggler from the opposite mainland, and having by some 
means been deprived of its ample tail, which serves to balance the body, it had probably lost command 
of itself, and thus been borne across the sea by the prevailing gales. That the Flycatcher does 
sometimes indulge voluntarily in a water excursion, I have myself had proof ; for in April 1869, when 
entering the Whangarei Heads, a Pied Fantail ( Rhipidura Jlabellifera) flew off from the shore, and 
after making a circuit of our little steamer, apparently to satisfy its curiosity, returned to the land. 
Ten years later another specimen was killed near a streamlet in the Pirongia Ranges, Waikato ; 
and a third was obtained by my son in a shrubbery near Wellington on the 2nd April, 1876. Again, 
a pair of these Black Fantails visited my garden on Wellington Terrace on the 15th of the same 
