535. GEOKICHLA MINDANENSIS Mearns.
MINDANAO GROUND THRUSH.
- Geocichla mindanensis Mearns, Phil. Jour. Sci. (1907), 2, sec. A, 359.
Mindanao (Mearns).
“Description of type (and only specimen).—Upper surface, including head, dark ashen gray closely resembling the shade of the same parts in Geocichla cinerea Bourns and Worcester; feathers of the back edged with black; scapulars with black spots occupying the tip of the web on the upper side; wing and tail-feathers shaded with brown and crossed by obsolete, wavy bars of darker; lores, eyelids, ear-coverts, and cheeks cinereous finely mixed with pale fawn-color, the malar region being cross-banded with black and fawn and the ear-coverts longitudinally striped with white; chin and throat white, narrowly cross-banded with black and bordered by black stripes; pectoral region plain cinereous-ash with pale shafts to the feathers; lower chest and flanks black and white, each feather heavily margined with jet-black inclosing a sharply pointed white spot; middle of abdomen white; crissum white, faintly washed with buff which is strongest on the lower tail-coverts; under side of wing-quills broadly white on inner border at base; edge of wing white; axillars white at base, broadly black at tip; under wing-coverts black, tipped with white and pale cream-color; upper wing-coverts without white spots. Length, 230; wing, 125; tail, 78; culmen (chord), 35; bill from nostril, 19; tarsus, 32; middle toe with claw, 30.
“This species was occasionally seen as it darted through the mossy forest or alighted upon the ground; but it was so shy that only a single specimen was shot, although its loud, sweet song was frequently heard at morning and evening.” (Mearns.)
Genus ZOOTHERA Vigors, 1831.
“In the genus Zoothera the sexes are alike, the under wing-coverts and axillars of two colors, the colors in the one part transposed or reversed in the other, the lower plumage squamated, not distinctly barred nor spotted, and the rictal bristles very long and numerous. The anterior or supplementary bristles extend over the nostrils as in the flycatchers, and Zoothera is the only genus of thrushes in which this feature is present. The bill is very long and strongly curved near the tip, and the edges of the mandible are frequently serrated by wear and tear, but never originally so.” (Oates.)