ee

 

SPIZIXOS CANIFRONS, Bytz.

Crested Spizixos.

Spizixos canifrons, Blyth, Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., xiv. p. 571.—Id. Cat. of Birds in Mus. Asiatic Soc. Calcutta,
p- 339.

 

Tue large group of Insessorial birds inhabiting India and the neighbouring countries, known under the
trivial name of Bulbuls, comprises several genera, among them, Hemixos, Alcurus, Ivos, Keelartia, Rubigula,
Brachypodius, Otocompsa, Pycnonotus, and Spizivos. Some of these curious birds are crested, others are
adorned with tufts of feathers springing from the sides of the face; some are distinguished by fine colours
on the throat or elsewhere, while others are plainly attired. Generally speaking the sexes are alike, and I
believe they all live exclusively on insects.

The two species known of the present form, of which the bird here represented is the type, differ from
the other members of the family in their bills being shorter, more obtuse, and somewhat assimilating to the
form of that organ in the members of the genus 4mpelis—a modification in structure which is doubtless
accompanied by some especial peculiarity in their general economy and mode of life at present unknown
to us. But few specimens of the Spizivos canifrons have as yet been sent to Europe, and it is here figured
for the first time. The following notes of its colouring and the country it inhabits are extracted from the
fourteenth volume of the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,’ and as they are from the pen of
Mr. Blyth we may be certain are correct. |

‘General colour bright olive-green, becoming yellowish green and more vivid on the rump and margins
of the primaries, and inclining also to yellow on the abdomen and more decidedly on the lower tail-coverts ;
forehead and chin pale ashy; nape, sides, and front of the neck somewhat darker, and passing into blackish
on the throat ; crown black, the feathers lengthened to a crest nearly an inch high ; tail-feathers largely
tipped with blackish ; bill yellow; legs brown.

“* Habitat. Cherra Poonjee, or the hill ranges bordering on Sylhet to the northward.”

One of the two figures on the accompanying Plate represents the bird of the natural size, the other is
somewhat reduced. The plant is the Zhibaudia macrantha.