Birds and Birding's Guide to:
Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS
THE FREE-TOED PERCHING BIRDS
THE ANT-BIRDS
Bush-birds
The Ant-birds are divided into three not very sharply defined groups, among them the so-called Ant-Shrikes (Thamnophilina), which include the largest and most widely distributed representatives of the family. In these birds the bill is large, deep, and compressed, and terminates in a strongly hooked and toothed tip, very much as in the bill of a Shrike, on which account, and before their structure was known, they were placed by the older systematists among the Laniida. The sexes are quite different in coloration, the males being varied with white and black and the females with brown. They are not usually strictly terrestrial in habit, but frequent dense bushes and trees at no great distance from the ground, on which account they are also called Bush-birds. Of the typical and largest genus (Thamnophilus) we may mention the Red-capped Bush-bird (T. ruficapillus) of Paraguay and Argentina, a bird about six inches long, olive-brown tinged with rufous above and grayish white below, the lower throat and abdomen being barred transversely with black. This species,Mr. Hudson says, is a shy, solitary bird, found in woods and thickets along streams; its only language is an occasional low, rasping note. The nest is a slight shallow structure placed in a low tree, and the eggs are white thinly spotted with reddish brown. Another species (T. carulescens) was found in lower Uruguay by Barrows, who observed them in the densest clumps and most tangled masses of swampy vines and shrubs. A nest found by him was almost precisely like that of the Red-eyed Vireo,”being pensile in the fork of a horizontal spray, only four feet from the ground. It contained three fresh eggs, white, with spots and dashes of light brown.”Of still another species (T. melanocrissus), noted by Dr. Richmond in Nicaragua, we learn that it is”found in thickets bordering the forest, in patches of brush in clearings, in clumps of bamboo along the banks of streams, and in similar places. It is often seen on the ground in these situations, searching for insect food."