This species generally resembles the one next described, and has, like it, a black, white, and grey plumage. But the tail, although strange, is constructed on a different pattern. The total length of the bird is five and a half inches, the tail being only two and a half. The two outer tail-feathers have remarkably stout shafts, with broad coarse webs, and look like stumps of two large feathers originally intended for a bigger bird, and finally cut off near their base and given to a very small one. In the male these two feathers are carried vertically and at right angles to the plane of the body, giving the bird a resemblance to a diminutive cock; hence the vernacular name 'Gallito,' or Little Cock, by which it is known. I have not observed this species myself, but Azara has the following paragraph about its habits:--"The male sometimes rises slowly and almost vertically, with tail raised, and rapidly beating its wings, and looking while ascending in this way more like a butterfly than a bird; and when it has reached a height of ten or twelve yards, it drops obliquely to the earth and perches on a stalk." He adds that the males are solitary, but several females are sometimes seen near together, and that the females are greatly in excess of the males. 123. ALECTRURUS RISORIUS (Vieill.). (STRANGE-TAILED TYRANT.) +Alectrurus guira-yetapa+, _Scl. et Salv. Nomencl._ p. 43; _Durnford, Ibis_, 1878, p. 60 (Buenos Ayres). +Alectrurus risorius+, _Barrows, Bull. Nutt. Orn. Cl._ viii. p. 140 (Entrerios). +Alectrurus psalurus+, _Burm. La-Plata Reise_, ii. p. 457 (S. Luis). _Description._--Above black, rump grey; front varied with white; wings black, scapularies, outer margins of wing-feathers and coverts white; tail black, two outer rectrices much elongated, denuded at the base, with a broad inner and no outer vane; below white, broad band across the breast black; throat in the breeding-season bare of feathers and of a bright orange; bill yellowish; feet black: whole length 11·0 inches, wings 3·0; tail, outer rectrices 8·0, middle 2·0. _Female_: above brown, wings varied with white; beneath white; breast-band pale brown; tail with the two outer rectrices slightly elongated and denuded, terminated with spatulations on the inner vane. _Hab._ S. Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentine Republic. Azara named this species _Cola estraña_ (Strange-tail), but mentions incidentally that its Guarani name is 'guira-yetapá' (Scissor-tail), a term which the Indians apply indiscriminately to several species having the same sort of tail.