Description.—Above nearly uniform earthy brown; wing-feathers pale cinnamon-red; greater part of the outer webs, excepting the inner secondaries and a transverse bar across the secondaries, blackish; tail pale cinnamon-red, with a broad blackish band across the terminal half; beneath pale fulvous white, breast more or less variegated with blackish; under wing-coverts pale cinnamomeous; bill horn-colour, pale at the base; feet horn-colour: whole length 5·5 inches, wing 3·5, tail 2·0. Female similar.
Hab. Chili, Patagonia and Argentina.
The country people have a variety of names for this common and well-known species. In Buenos Ayres it is usually called Manea-cola (Shake-tail), in Patagonia Caserita (Little House-builder), and in other places Minera (Miner) or Caminante (Traveller), from its habit of running rapidly along a clean road or bridle-path before a person riding or walking.
It is a stout little bird, with very short toes quite unsuited for perching, and it does not, in fact, ever perch on a tree, though it manages to cling to a perpendicular bank very well, when engaged in opening its breeding-hole. It is resident and pairs for life, and lives in sterile places, feeding on small insects and spiders. In manner it is very lively, and runs swiftly over the bare ground, stopping very abruptly, then running on again, and at every pause slowly moving its half-open tail up and down. It flies swiftly, close to the ground, and always during its short flight trills out its clear, ringing, rapidly reiterated cry, which in sound resembles the laughter of a child.
On the grassy pampas the Miners invariably attach themselves to the Vizcacheras—as the groups of great burrows made by the large rodent, the Vizcacha, are called; for there is always a space free from grass surrounding the burrows where the birds can run freely about. In the sides of the deep pit-like entrance to one of these burrows the bird bores a cylindrical hole, from three to six feet long, and terminating in a circular chamber. This is lined with soft dry grass, and five white eggs are laid.
Though the birds inhabit the Vizcacha village all the year, they seem always to make a fresh hole to breed in every spring, the forsaken holes being given up to the small Swallow, Atticora cyanoleuca.
[177.] GEOBAMON RUFIPENNIS, Burm.
(RED-WINGED MINER.)
Geobamon rufipennis, Burm. La-Plata Reise, ii. p. 465 (Paraná).
Description.—Above reddish grey-brown; lores, rim round the eye, cheeks, and body below white; breast tinged with yellowish grey; wings blackish brown, inner webs ferruginous, with their tips and outer basal edges pale ferruginous; tail bright ferruginous, with a broad black transverse band near the tip; bill black, base of under mandible and legs pale brown: whole length 7·0 inches, wing 4·0, tail 2·0.