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In the Patagonia thickets the small tit-like creeper, Laptas-thenura, is the prime mover; and after a considerable number of these have gathered, creepers of other species and genera unite with them, and finally the band, as it moves through the thickets, draws to itself other kinds flycatchers, finches, &c. many of the birds running or hopping on the ground to search for insects in the loose soil or under dead leaves, while others explore the thorny bushes.
The visible portions of the closed wing and tail are cobalt-blue. This species goes about in flocks and has all the habits of a tit. It utters a cheerful chirrup. Liothrix lutea. The red-billed liothrix or hill-tit, or the Pekin-robin. This interesting bird forms the subject of a separate essay. Ixulus flavicollis. The yellow-naped ixulus. A small tit-like bird with a crest.
A flock of dull-brown birds, about the size of sparrows, having the chin and throat streaked with black, are likely to be striped-throated yuhinas. Minla igneitincta. The red-tailed minla or hill-tit. This tit-like babbler is often seen in company with the true tits, which it resembles in habits and size. The head is black with a white eyebrow. The wings and tail are black and crimson.
White-eyes invariably go about in flocks; each member of the company utters unceasingly a cheeping note in order to keep his fellows apprized of his movements. These birds feed largely on insects, which they pick off leaves in truly tit-like manner, sometimes even hanging head downwards in order to secure a morsel. It is not a true bulbul.
Between the minute, straight, conical, tit-like beaks of the Laptasthenura a tit in appearance and habits and the extravagantly long, sword-shaped bill of Nasica, or the excessively attenuated, sickle-shaped organ in Xiphorynchus, the divergence is amazing, compared with what is found in other families; while between these two extremes there is a heterogeneous assemblage of birds with beaks like creepers, nuthatches, finches, tyrant-birds, woodpeckers, crows, and even curlews and ibises.
Minivets are birds of tit-like habits which wander about in small flocks from place to place picking insects from the leaves of trees. They are essentially arboreal birds. I have never seen a minivet on the ground. The head and back of the cock are black. His wings are black and flame-colour, the red being so arranged as to form a band running lengthwise and not across the wing.
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