Ardea callocephala, Wagl. Syst. Av.
Mr. G. R. Gray has thought it advisable to give the following description of this specimen, from the Gallapagos Archipelago. It appears to be a young bird, and is small in all its dimensions.
Upper part blackish grey; each feather marked down the middle with a broad stripe of black, and tinged on the margins with shining bronze brown; beneath the body blueish grey, with the front of the neck, top of the head, and margins of the feathers on the thighs rufous; the sides of the head and throat deep black, the former divided in the middle on each side with a patch of white; the bill black, and feet of a pale reddish colour.
2. Nycticorax americanus. Bonap.
Ardea nycticorax, Wils. (young bird.)
Valparaiso, Chile.
Theristicus melanops. Wagl.
Ibis melanops, Lath. Hist. ix. pl. 150.
This bird frequents the desert gravelly plains of Patagonia, as far south as lat. 48°: in the British Museum there are specimens which Captain Clapperton brought from central Africa; so that this bird has an extraordinarily wide range. It generally lives in pairs, but during part of the year in small flocks. Its cry is very singular and loud: when it is heard at a distance it closely resembles the neighing of the guanaco. I opened the stomach of two specimens, and found in them remains of lizards, cicadæ, and scorpions. It builds in rocky cliffs on the sea shore: egg dirty white, freckled with pale reddish brown; its circumference over longer axis is seven inches. The legs are carmine and scarlet-red: iris scarlet-red.