(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.