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Synallaxis phryganophila makes a stick nest about a foot in depth, and from the top a tubular passage, formed of slender twigs interlaced, runs down the entire length of the nest, like a rain-pipe on the wall of a house, and then becoming external slopes upward, ending at a distance of two to three feet from the nest.
On the stony plateaus of the Andes, and on the most barren spots in Patagonia, where no other bird is seen, there are small species of Synallaxis, which, in their obscure colour and motions on the ground, resemble mice rather than birds; indeed, the Quichua name for one of these Synallaxes is ukatchtuka, or mouse-bird.
This is most remarkable in Synallaxis phryganophila, the chin being sulphur-yellow, beneath which is a spot of velvet-black, and on either side a white patch, the throat thus having three strongly contrasted colours, arranged in four divisions.
Its plumage was yellowish in hue, like sere dead herbage, and its extremely slender body looked longer and slimmer than it was, owing to the great length of its tail, or of the two middle tail-feathers. I knew that it was a Synallaxis a genus of small birds of the Woodhewer family.
Throughout South America there are several varieties of these fruit-and-stem or watering-pot shaped nests; they are not, however, all built by birds of one genus, while in the genus Synallaxis many species have no tubular passageways attached to their nests.
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