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I was headed toward a distant palm frond beneath whose tip was a nest of Rufous Hermits, for I wished to see the two atoms of hummingbirds at the moment when they rolled from their petit pois egg-shells. I gave this up for the day and turned up the hill, where fifty feet away was the stump and bush near which I had sat and watched.
These two species are distinguished from the brown-fronted pied woodpecker by having no brown on the forehead. The rufous abdomen serves to differentiate the rufous-bellied from the Western Himalayan species. The above woodpeckers are not much larger than mynas. The English name of this bird is very cumbrous. There is no help for this.
Exp. 2 1/2 inches. CHELONIA PALLIDA, pl. 5. f. 3. Anterior wings pale brown, with white nervures and nervules, and marked with several whitish spots, of which four are on the costa, two longitudinal before, two transverse beyond the middle of the wing, and on the inner margin are three irregular patches, sometimes confluent, beyond which is a band parallel with the outer margin, commencing above the upper median nervule, and terminating on the inner margin; posterior wings white, with a discoidal spot, a macular band near the outer margin, and a less distinct marginal one, all brownish; head white; thorax white, with three black vittae; abdomen above rufous, with six transverse black spots, the sides varied with black and white; antennae black; femora red; tibiae and tarsi black.
It is a singular fact that the plumage of these owls presents two totally distinct phases which "have no relation to sex, age, or season," one being an ashen gray, the other a bright rufous. Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with the golden-crowned thrush, which, however, is no thrush at all, but a warbler.
IT was a scene of bitter disputation. A hawk-nosed young man with a pointing finger was prominent. His face worked violently, his lips moved very rapidly, but what he said was inaudible. Behind him the little rufous man with the big eyes twitched at his robe and offered suggestions. And behind these two clustered a great multitude of heated, excited, swarthy faces....
Probably she adored her rufous lord, took his veneer of courtesy a veneer of the most exquisite polish, I grant you, but perilously thin for the very perfection of chivalry. Or perchance it was his inner savageness itself that charmed her; the most refined women often amaze one by the fascination which the preponderance of the brute in the opposite sex seems to have for them.
The most characteristic pampean birds are the tinamous called partridges in the vernacular the rufous tinamou, large as a fowl, and the spotted tinamou, which is about the size of the English partridge.
Hist. p. 225, 1853, that a bubbling spring at the village of Tonniotoo, three miles S.W. of Moeletivoe, supplies most of the leeches used in the island. In size the cattle leech of Ceylon is somewhat larger than the medicinal leech of Europe: in colour it is of a uniform brown without bands, unless a rufous margin may be so considered. It has dark striæ.
Other dogs have a larger share of innate wisdom, others are most aesthetically beautiful, others more peaceable; but our rufous friend has a way of winning into his owner's heart and making there an abiding place which is all the more secure because it is gained by sincere and undemonstrative devotion. Perhaps one likes him equally for his faults as for his merits.
Great golden and rufous bees blundered down and gouged out bucketsful of mud; while slender-bodied, dainty, ebony wasps, after much fastidious picking of place, would detach a tiny bit of the whitest clay, place it in their snuff-box holder, clean their feet and antennæ, run their rapier in and out and delicately take to wing.
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