The SABRE-BILL (_Xiphorhynchus trochilirostris_) is readily known by its
unusually long, slender, sickle-shaped beak, and short tail. The wings,
in which the fourth quill is the longest, are also comparatively short,
and the legs are slender. The tongue is short, and broad at its tip. The
plumage is of a dull olive-brown, streaked with yellowish white on the
head, throat, and breast; the wings and tail are deep reddish brown; the
eye is brown, the beak reddish brown, and the foot of a dull brownish hue.
This species is nine inches and a half long, and eleven and a quarter
broad; the wing measures three inches and three-quarters, the tail three
inches and a quarter, and the beak two inches and one-third.
"I found this strange bird," says the Prince von Wied, "in the vast,
unbroken forests that extend from Ilheos to Bahia, where it lives in pairs
upon the trees from which it gathers the insects and beetles upon which it
subsists."