[247.] HELEOTHREPTUS ANOMALUS (GOULD).
(SHORT-WINGED GOATSUCKER.)
Amblypterus anomalus, Gould, Icon. Av. pl. 11. Heleothreptus anomalus, Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 97; Durnford, Ibis, 1878, p. 62 (Buenos Ayres); Pelz. Orn. Bras. p. 12.
Description.—Greyish brown, irregularly dashed and spotted with black; long superciliaries and faint nuchal collar pale fawn-colour; wing-coverts and secondaries like the back, but with pale fawn-coloured spots; primaries black, with the basal portion reddish fawn-colour and tips white, the first six nearly equal in length, and curved inwards; tail fawn-colour, irregularly barred with blackish, two centre feathers like the back: beneath, throat and breast blackish brown, with slight fawn-coloured shaft-spots; abdomen pale fawn-colour, with irregular blackish cross bands; tarsi long, naked: whole length 7·0 inches, wing 5·2, tail 3·5. Female similar, but wings banded with rufous, and without the white tips.
Hab. South Brazil and Argentina.
Mr. Durnford obtained a single female of this rare and anomalous Caprimulgine form on the 31st of March, 1877, near Quilmes in the province of Buenos Ayres. It was flushed from a clump of thistles, and its stomach was full of insect-remains.
[Order III. PICI.]
[ Fam. XXIII. PICIDÆ, or WOODPECKERS.]
The Woodpeckers are distributed all over the world except Australia and the adjacent islands (up to Flores and Celebes) and Madagascar. They are very abundant in the Neotropical and Oriental Regions, where great forests predominate. From South and Central America about 120 species, mostly belonging to peculiar genera, have been recorded. In Argentina, as might have been expected from the vast extent of the pampas districts, Woodpeckers are not so plentiful as in the densely wooded countries of Amazonia and Colombia. But four Woodpeckers are met with in the riverain woods of Buenos Ayres, and a fifth, a curiously modified form, is peculiar to the Pampas, while eight others are known with more or less certainty from the northern provinces of the Republic.