This Tinamou is frequently run down and caught by well-mounted Gaucho boys; the bird frequently escapes into a kennel in the earth, but when it sees no refuge before it and is hotly pursued, it sometimes drops dead. When caught in the hand they “feign death” or swoon, but on being released quickly recover their faculties.
The nest is a slight hollow scratched in the ground under a thistle or in the grass, and lined with a few dry leaves. The number of eggs laid varies from five to eight. These are elliptical, with polished shells, and as a rule are of a wine-purple colour; but the hue varies somewhat, some eggs having a reddish tinge and others a deep liver-colour.
[431.] NOTHURA DARWINI, Gray.
(DARWIN’S TINAMOU.)
[Plate XX.]
Nothura minor, Darwin, Zool. Voy. ‘Beagle,’ iii. p. 119 (Bahia Blanca). Nothura darwini, Gray, List of Gall. B. M. p. 104 (1867); Scl. P. Z. S. 1872. p. 547. Nothura maculosa, Durnford, Ibis, 1877, p. 45 (Chupat). Nothura perdicaria, Durnford, Ibis, 1878, p. 405 (Centr. Patagonia).
Description.—Above cinereous; feathers of head and back marked with narrow black and fulvous cross bands and margined with bright ashy-white edgings; wings ashy black, crossed on both webs by fulvous bands, except in the two outer primaries: beneath pale fulvous, throat white; breast more cinereous, and densely covered with indistinct black and brown cross bars and whitish-grey streaks; flanks and lower belly with irregular black cross bars; bill horn-colour; lower mandible and feet yellowish: whole length 8·5 inches, wing 5·4, tail 2·4.
Hab. Northern Patagonia.
This species, called Perdiz chico by the natives, is somewhat smaller and paler in colouring than the common Tinamou of the pampas, but very closely resembles the young of that species. It inhabits Patagonia, and is nowhere very numerous, but appears to be thinly and equally distributed on the dry sterile plains of that region, preferring places abounding in thin scrub. In disposition it is extremely shy, and when approached springs up at a distance ahead and runs away with the greatest speed and apparently much terrified. Sometimes when thus running it utters short whistled notes like the allied species. It rises more readily and with less noise than the pampas bird, and has a much higher flight. It has one call-note, heard only in the love-season—a succession of short whistling notes, like those of the N. maculosa, but without the rapidly uttered conclusion.