Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS

THE FREE-TOED PERCHING BIRDS

THE RIFLEMAN AND NEW ZEALAND WRENS

(Family Xenicidw)
Formerly placed among the singing birds (Oscines) and associated with the Creepers and Wrens — and they have very Creeper- and Wren-like habits and appearance — are several little New Zealand birds known as Rock Wrens, Bush Wrens, and the Rifleman; but some twenty years ago it was shown conclusively that the structure of their vocal apparatus precluded their being placed among the Oscines. They appear to be most closely related to the Pittas (though Pycraft has recently suggested the possibility of their being more nearly related to the Oven-birds [Furnarius]) from which they differ in having ten, instead of the usual number of twelve, tail-feathers, as well as in the arrangement of the scales on the tarsus. Only four or five species are known, these being disposed in three genera, all confined to New Zealand. Of these the Rifleman (Acanthidositta chloris) is not only the smallest but has the distinction of being the smallest bird known from New Zealand, being but three inches in length. The plumage is greenish above, tinged with brown on the forehead and white below tinged with yellowish in the flanks, and there is a white line over the eye, while the blackish tail is tipped with yellowish white, but the tail is so short as to be hardly visible when the bird is in motion. It is found rather abundantly throughout most of both the North and South islands, frequenting the sides and summits of the wooded ranges, where it is described as a very lively and active bird, being incessantly on the move, running up and about the trunks of the larger trees with quivering wings and prying into every chink and crevice with its slender, slightly upturned bill, uttering the while a low, feeble cheep like the cry of a young bird. Its powers of flight are feeble and it simply uses its wings for short passages from one tree to another. It builds a nest of leaves and plant fragments in holes in trees or other cavities and lays white eggs. Closely allied but with a stouter and broader bill are three species of the genus Xenicus, one of which is known as the Rock Wren (X. gilviventris) and the other as the Bush Wren (X. longipes), both confined to the South Island. The first is three and seven tenths inches long, olive-brown above and pale brown beneath, while the other is dark green tinged with yellow above and dusky below; it is about four inches in length. The Rock Wren, as the name implies, frequents the rocks, especially the loose talus high up on the mountain sides, where it darts in and out among the piles of angular stones, quite after the manner of our own Rock Wren. The claw of the hind toe is greatly developed, even exceeding the length of the toe itself, a modification of structure especially adapted to the peculiar rock-haunting habits of the bird. It has a weak note, but is apparently not much given to using it, and the nest, a neatly made affair, is placed among rocks or in a crevice in a bank; the eggs, from three to five in number, are pure white.

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