where it can overlook the neighbourhood, it often emits a short
call-note. I t is anything but timid, and very easy toshodt. It
is usually found where the woods are varied witliTopen country,
on the edges of the woods, but likewise in the interior of them.
The food of these birds consists of insects, of which I have found
the remains in their stomachs. On the Rio Grande del Belmonte
I observed how these birds nest. In the month of August I saw
them enter a round hole in a perpendicular sand-bank on the
river, like a kingfisher’s. After digging about two feet in a
horizontal direction, we'found'two milk-white eggs upon a bad
lining of a few feathers.” '
This bird, which was first described by Pallas as long ago as
1783, was rightly separated by Mr. Gould from the res^otf. the
family on account of its very lengthened form of wing". M.Nat-
te re ts observations on its habits ^as given by Mr. Gould coincide
with those of the Prince Maximilian just quoted, and I may add*
that Mr. Wallace’s account of its mode of nesting is likewise the
same as that previously givenr—not- that any confirmation was
necessary to the evidence of so accurate an observer.
A .Trinidad skin of* this bird in. any own collection is much
smaller than the Brazilian examples, and the colours are, generally
more intense." The Guiana specimens in .the British Mur--*
seurn collected by Schomburgk are also rather smaller, and
agree nearly with mine from Trinidad.
The same variation ^occurs in many other birds, amounting, or
being considered to amount"in some cases to a specificdifferenee.
2. CnEilDOPTERA ALBIPENNIS, Bp.
Plate IV.
Chelidoptera albipennis, Bp. Jdum. f. Om. 18§3, p. 47.
Ch. prsecedenti similis, sed minor et-magis nigra: .abdomine
intense castaneo : tectriqibus alarum inferioribus candidiS :
remigibus primariis basi, secondariis apice latissime albis.
(Bp. l.c.)
Hdb. in Venezuela; Cumana.
The plate represents the specimen in th e Museum of the Jardin
des Plantes at Paris, upon which the-Prince Charles Bonaparte
established this new species. I must,confess.I should like to see
more examples of, i t ; as it appears to.me "to be“ very possibly
nothing more than the small Variety of the preceding typ,erspecies
with an accidental whitejDar 'on* the wing: But I did n o t make
a very accurate examination of it, and the Prince Charles Bonaparte
has had a muck better opportunity of deciding whether it
is a good species than I have. To his authority I defer.
mm
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