On the Habits of the Queo, Rhodinocichla rosea

notes reached me from the thicket across the grassy roadway. The powerful song was so unlike that of any other bird I knew that I could not even surmise the family relationship of its author. For a long while my efforts to glimpse him were vain. The dense verdure at the thicket's edge quite concealed the bird who sang so gloriously within it; and when I tried to force my way through the tangle of bushes bound together by creepers, I inevitably made so much noise that I drove him away. It was not until, with the advance of the dry season in February, the thickets lost much of their foliage and became more penetrable to vision, that I at last won a glimpse of the secretive musician. After I learned what to look for, I saw him repeatedly. In appearance, he was no less lovely than in voice. He was about 20 cm long, with a broad, rounded tail. All his upper plumage, including the wings and tail, were slaty black, as were his lores and cheeks. Each side of the forehead was broadly red, which color extended along the sides of the head as a narrowing streak that faded to pinkish above the eye, then continued backward to the hindhead as a thin, whitish line. All of his central under parts, from chin to tail coverts, were bright rose-red, which on the sides of the breast was invaded by extensions from the black of the upper parts, forming an incomplete collar. The rather long, stout bill was largely blackish. The