Hab. Argentina.
This is a common species throughout the eastern portion of the Argentine country, and extends as far south as the southern boundary of the Buenos Ayrean province.
It is resident, living in pairs in places where there are scattered thorny trees and bushes, and is never found in deep woods. It never attempts to conceal itself, but, on the contrary, sits exposed on a bush and will allow a person to approach within three or four yards of it. Nor has it the restless manner of most Synallaxine birds which live in the same places with it, but moves in a slow deliberate way, and spends a great deal of time sitting motionless on its perch, occasionally uttering its call or song, composed of a series of long, shrill, powerful notes in descending scale and uttered in a very leisurely manner. It builds a large oblong nest of sticks, about two feet deep, and placed obliquely among the thorny twigs of a bush or low tree. Mr. Barrows writes:—“There are commonly two cavities in the nest, one being half open to the weather, and forming the entrance, the other further back and connected with the former by only a short passage-way, which in many cases is reduced to a simple hole through a broad partition, which alone separates them.” The eggs are four and of a pure white.
The name commonly used for this species is founded on the “Anumbé roxo” of Azara’s ‘Apuntamientos’; but the description given there of the bird’s nesting-habits shows either that some other species was meant—perhaps P. sibilatrix, Döring—or that the nesting-habits of a different bird have been assigned to P. ruber.
[212.] HOMORUS LOPHOTES, Reichenb.
(BROWN CACHALOTE.)
[Plate IX.]
Homorus lophotes, Reichb. Handb. p. 172; Barrows, Bull. Nutt. Orn. Cl. vol. viii. p. 212 (Entrerios); Hudson, Ibis, 1885, p. 283 (Buenos Ayres). Anabates unirufus, Burm. La-Plata Reise, ii. p. 466 (Cordova). Homorus unirufus, Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 65; White, P. Z. S. 1882, p. 612 (Catamarca).
Description.—Above brown, tinged with olive on the back, but clear and rufescent on the hind head and rump; crest-feathers blackish brown; wings blackish; tail chestnut; beneath earthy brown, throat rufous; under wing- and tail-coverts and inner margins of wing-feathers pale rufous; bill pale bluish, feet bluish horn-colour: whole length 9·8 inches, wing 4·6, tail 4·2. Female similar.