Form. Bill, straight, wide at base, blunt and rounded, and somewhat flattened towards the point; wings, rather long, secondaries, broad and mostly obtuse at their ends; tail, moderate, tarsi rather long, moderately robust, and with the toes distinctly scaled; claws, curved, rather strong and sharp.
Dimensions. Total length (of skin), about 10 inches; wing, 6; tail, 4½; bill, from gape, 1½ inches.
Colors. Adult.—Throat, white, tinged with bluish running into stripes on the neck before. Entire other plumage, above and below, ashy-blue, much darker and clearer on the head, palest on the abdomen, tibiæ and under wing coverts. Cheeks and frontal feathers, pale ultramarine; bill and claws dark; irides, light-brown—sexes alike.
Hab. New Mexico, Nebraska. Spec. in Mus. Acad., Philada., and Nat. Mus., Washington city.
Obs. This species does not resemble any other in such degree as to readily lead to confusion, and as yet stands alone in its genus.
The bird described by Col. McCall, as above, and to which he did us the honor to apply our name, he has since ascertained to be the present species, of which, at the time of the publication of his description, no specimen was exhibited in the nearly complete collection of Jays in the museum of the Philadelphia Academy, nor had it ever been mentioned by any American ornithologist. He observed it in the vicinity of Santa Fé, in considerable numbers.
Although as we have said above, nearly the whole of the valuable Zoological notes in the German edition of the Prince Maximilian’s Travels, are omitted in the English translation; two notices of the present species may be found in the latter, pp. 287, 297, the last of which is the description, and seems to have accidentally escaped the singular want of judgment which induced the omissions to which we allude.
Plate 29
The Black Flycatcher
Ptilogonys nitens (Swainson)