This species generally resembles the one next described, and has, like it, a black, white, and grey plumage. But the tail, although strange, is constructed on a different pattern. The total length of the bird is five and a half inches, the tail being only two and a half. The two outer tail-feathers have remarkably stout shafts, with broad coarse webs, and look like stumps of two large feathers originally intended for a bigger bird, and finally cut off near their base and given to a very small one. In the male these two feathers are carried vertically and at right angles to the plane of the body, giving the bird a resemblance to a diminutive cock; hence the vernacular name ‘Gallito,’ or Little Cock, by which it is known.
I have not observed this species myself, but Azara has the following paragraph about its habits:—“The male sometimes rises slowly and almost vertically, with tail raised, and rapidly beating its wings, and looking while ascending in this way more like a butterfly than a bird; and when it has reached a height of ten or twelve yards, it drops obliquely to the earth and perches on a stalk.” He adds that the males are solitary, but several females are sometimes seen near together, and that the females are greatly in excess of the males.
[123.] ALECTRURUS RISORIUS (Vieill.).
(STRANGE-TAILED TYRANT.)
Alectrurus guira-yetapa, Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 43; Durnford, Ibis, 1878, p. 60 (Buenos Ayres). Alectrurus risorius, Barrows, Bull. Nutt. Orn. Cl. viii. p. 140 (Entrerios). Alectrurus psalurus, Burm. La-Plata Reise, ii. p. 457 (S. Luis).
Description.—Above black, rump grey; front varied with white; wings black, scapularies, outer margins of wing-feathers and coverts white; tail black, two outer rectrices much elongated, denuded at the base, with a broad inner and no outer vane; below white, broad band across the breast black; throat in the breeding-season bare of feathers and of a bright orange; bill yellowish; feet black: whole length 11·0 inches, wings 3·0; tail, outer rectrices 8·0, middle 2·0. Female: above brown, wings varied with white; beneath white; breast-band pale brown; tail with the two outer rectrices slightly elongated and denuded, terminated with spatulations on the inner vane.
Hab. S. Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentine Republic.
Azara named this species Cola estraña (Strange-tail), but mentions incidentally that its Guarani name is ‘guira-yetapá’ (Scissor-tail), a term which the Indians apply indiscriminately to several species having the same sort of tail.
The Guira-yetapá is a very curious little bird, with a black, white, and grey plumage and the beak of a true Tyrant; but it differs from all its congeners in having the skin of the chin, throat, and sides of the head bare of feathers, and these parts in the breeding-season are a bright orange colour. It is a feeble flier, its wings being very short, while the two outer tail-feathers are abnormally long and peculiar in form. Mr. Barrows says:—“The remarkable condition of the outer pair of tail-feathers is interesting. In the male these two feathers reach a length of nearly ten inches, the rest of the tail being about three inches in length. The vane on the inner side of each is wanting for the first two inches, and then suddenly develops to a width of nearly two inches, which it maintains almost to the tip, when it gradually narrows. The vane on the outer side of the shaft is only about one-quarter of an inch wide, and is folded so tightly against the shaft that it is quite inconspicuous. In the only two males of this species which I have seen flying, these long feathers seemed to be carried folded together beneath the rest of the tail, and stretching out behind like a rudder or steering-oar, their vanes at right angles to the plane of the rest of the tail.”
Mr. Gibson gives a different account, and says the flight is singularly feeble, resembling the fluttering passage of a butterfly through the air, while the tail streams out behind.