Polioptila haunts tall trees or shrubs in pairs or small companies; the habits are restless, the flight is quick, the food consists of gnats and so forth, commonly captured on the wing. The purse-like nest is felted with bark, fibres, and down, and decorated with lichens; it is woven to boughs, stems, or creepers, and contains four or five greenish- or bluish-white eggs, marked with red-brown, lilac, and grey.
Of the Miminae, Mimus polyglottus is the Mocking-bird in chief; the natural song being rich, varied, and powerful, and the imitations ranging from the yelp of the Eagle to the noises of the farm-yard. It is found from the United States to Mexico and the Antilles, where in isolated trees, hedges, or brambles it makes a bulky platform of rough twigs to support the cup of roots, wool, and so forth, which contains the four to six pale greenish-blue–or rarely buffish–eggs, with brown and purplish markings. The movements are energetic but graceful, the flight Thrush-like; the food consists of insects, often taken in the air, and fruit. Mimus modulator, the "Calandria," of Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia, feeds chiefly on the ground, and can hardly be said to mock, though M. triurus of the same countries does so. Galeoscoptes carolinensis, the Cat-bird, besides an attractive song, utters clucks, whistles, and mewing sounds; it feeds chiefly on insect-larvae, and deposits from three to five deep greenish-blue eggs in a nest of twigs, bark, and plant-stalks lined with grass. Oreoscoptes, of the North American sage-brush districts, resembles Mimus in its habits, nest, and eggs, but is no mimic; nor, it may be added, are the shy Thrashers (Harporhynchus), which commonly haunt arid situations, placing their large, flattish nest of coarse twigs, leaves, fibres, bark, grass, and moss, lined with softer materials, in low trees or thorny scrub. Their three to six eggs are white, bluish, greenish, or buff, with yellowish, purplish, or red-brown spots or specks, those of the more terrestrial H. crissalis being uniform pale greenish-blue. Donacobius frequents reeds, but possibly does not belong to this group; Melanoptila has a harsh or mewing note, and lays blue eggs, as does Melanotis.
Fam. VIII. Cinclidae.–The Dippers or Water-Ousels form a single genus, Cinclus, probably more akin to the Wrens than to the Thrushes. The bill is moderate and straight, without bristles at the gape, the maxilla being slightly curved and notched; the smooth metatarsi are fairly long and strong; the wings are abbreviated, rounded, and concave; the tail is extremely short, and the whole body peculiarly squat-looking. The colour above is normally greyish-black or brown, C. ardesiacus being, however, delicate grey; the lower parts are similar or white, commonly with a black belly, while a chestnut band crosses the breast in the British C. aquaticus and in C. albicollis. White spots often occur above and below the eye; C. leuconotus and C. leucocephalus have nearly white heads, and the former shews white on the back. The sexes are alike, but the young are spotted. Both plumage and down are close and nearly impervious to water.
These birds range throughout the Palaearctic Region, just reaching the southern slopes of the Himalayas, China, and Formosa. One species occupies the Atlas Mountains, while others occur along the heights of Western America, and the Andes southwards to Peru. Individuals of a dark form from Northern Europe occasionally stray to Britain, but such migration is exceptional.
Fig. 113.–Dipper. Cinclus aquaticus. × 5⁄13.
Dippers frequent rapid streams in hill-country, which seldom freeze, and appear as cheery in winter as in summer; their flight is powerful, rapid, and direct, with quick wing-strokes and sudden descent; their cry upon the wing is loud and clear, their song when stationary Wren-like. They sit on stones in the water, bobbing up and down and jerking their tails, while they use both legs and wings below the surface, whither they dive noiselessly in search of insects, their larvae and pupae, or molluscs. Fish-spawn has not been found in the stomach. The domed, but flattened, nest is composed chiefly of moss or grass, with an inner bed of dry materials, which are generally oak or beech leaves, though in India sometimes ferns and roots. It is affixed to rock-faces, ledges, or boulders in streams, placed in crevices of masonry, or even built in holes in the soil or in débris caught on bushes, common situations being behind water-falls, under bridges, or beside mill-wheels. C. albicollis seems to make an open fabric in Italy. From four to seven dull white eggs are laid very early in the season, two or even three sets being often produced–occasionally in the same nest. This the young sometimes leave by the end of March, being able to swim before they are fully fledged.
Fam. IX. Troglodytidae.–The Wrens have their headquarters in Tropical America, but even reach Greenland, Patagonia, and the Falkland Islands. Four genera with some eight species inhabit the Himalayas, the hills of West China, the Burmese countries, Sumatra and Java; while Troglodytes, including the common Wren, occupies most of the Palaearctic and Nearctic Regions. An altitude of eleven thousand feet is attained in certain cases.
The bill is generally moderate, slender, and somewhat arched; being, however, stouter and almost hooked in Thryothorus and Campylorhynchus, much elongated in Catherpes, Salpinctes, and Microcerculus, high and compressed in Cyphorhinus, remarkably conical, straight, and pointed in Sphenocichla. The maxilla may be notched, but rictal bristles are almost entirely absent. The long robust metatarsi are scutellated anteriorly, except in Pnoëpyga; Salpinctes shews scales behind; Cistothorus has a very large hind claw. The wings are rounded and concave; the tail is usually short and graduated, though it is exceptionally long in Cinnicerthia, Sphenocichla, and Urocichla, and is hardly visible in three species of Pnoëpyga. The last-named genus has only six rectrices, Urocichla has ten. The coloration is ordinarily brown, with a great tendency to barring; spots, stripes, and streaks are not uncommon; chestnut, bay, orange, and grey often relieve the dulness; Troglodytes formosus, Catherpes, and Henicorhina exhibit white spots above or even below; and two species of Microcerculus have a white alar bar.
