Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS

THE FREE-TOED PERCHING BIRDS

THE ANT-BIRDS

(Family Formicariide)
Closely related to the last family, but distinguished at once by the taxas-pidean instead of endaspidean tarsi, is another great family of neotropical birds known collectively as Ant-birds. They arc also of small size, being mostly under ten inches in length and mainly confined in their distribution to the hot tropical forests of Central America and northern South America, only very few of the forty genera and nearly three hundred and fifty species reaching as far south as northern Argentina and Uruguay. Many of them are ground- or bush-haunting birds, frequenting the dense tangle of underbrush, through which they run with great facility, and into the mazes of which they plunge on the slightest cause for alarm, while others are found in low or medium-sized trees. The wings are short and rounded, as they enjoy but limited powers of flight, while the tail is of varying length though often short. The tarsi and toes are long and slender, the outer toe being united to the middle one at base, and the claws are of moderate size, while the feathering of the rump is fine and slender, and the interscapular region in the male is, in a majority of cases, marked with a concealed patch of white. The color of the plumage varies considerably, but inclines as a rule to dark brown or black, or black and white.
There are differences of opinion as to their food. Although called Ant-birds, it has been asserted by Belt and other naturalists, who have seen them at home, that they never feed on ants, and when found in attendance on the ant armies so often met with in the tropical forests it is for the purpose of feeding on the insects started up by the advancing hosts and not on the ants themselves. On the other hand, an equally good observer, Dr. C. W. Richmond, who made observations on a number of species in the forests of Nicaragua, states that three or four species of Ant-birds were almost always to be located about an ant army, and appeared to be eating the ants, as examples of the latter were found sticking to the mouths of the birds shot, while Sefior Alfaro, director of the National Museum of Costa Rica, states that he has dissected the birds and found their stomachs to contain ants. Furthermore, Dr. Richmond adds that he found the birds as frequently attending the armies that go in solid lines of only five or six inches wide as those covering a width of fifteen or twenty feet. Most species, however, appear not to feed on ants, but on various other insects with occasional seeds. The notes of the Ant-birds are various, sometimes being a loud, clear, not unmusical whistle, and in others a monotonous chant. Many are said to possess decided ventriloquial powers, throwing their voices so as to deceive as to their position and distance. Comparatively little is known regarding their nesting habits.

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