White speaks of this species as follows:--"These noisy birds, abundant in various parts of Misiones as well as in the rest of the north of the Republic, go about in flocks of eight or ten, and settle on the same tree, which they proceed to ascend very comically in a spiral or corkscrew fashion, each head touching the preceding tail. They are not seen in dense forests, but only out in the open, on some old, usually dead, tree, and I think I observed them as far south as the sierras of Cordoba." 259. COLAPTES LONGIROSTRIS, Cab. (LONG-BILLED WOODPECKER.) +Colaptes longirostris+, _Cabanis, Journ. f. Orn._ 1883, p. 97. _Description._--Similar to _C. rupicola_, d'Orb., but with the bill much longer. _Hab._ Tucuman. This is a southern form of the Brazilian _C. rupicola_, which has been recently described by Dr. Cabanis. Herr Schulz obtained a single male example of this species in Tucuman. Like _C. rupicola_ it has red moustaches, but no red nape-band, whereas the more northern _C. pura_ of Peru shows a red nape-band in both sexes. 260. COLAPTES AGRICOLA (Malh.). (PAMPAS WOODPECKER.) +Colaptes agricola+, _Scl. et Salv. Nomencl._ p. 101; _Hudson, P. Z. S._ 1872, p. 549 (Rio Negro); _Barrows, Auk_, 1884, p. 25 (Entrerios); _Withington, Ibis_, 1888, p. 468 (Lomas de Zamora). +Colaptes australis+, _Burm. La-Plata Reise_, ii. p. 445 (Paraná). +Colaptes campestris+, _White, P. Z. S._ 1882, p. 618 (Misiones). _Description._--Above greyish white, transversely barred with blackish; wings black, with golden-yellow shafts, and white bars on the outer webs; rump white, with smaller black cross bars; crested head black; sides of head and whole neck in front yellow; malar stripe red; abdomen white, with regular transverse black bars; under wing-coverts yellowish white; bill and feet black: whole length 13·0 inches, wing 6·8, tail 4·9. _Female_ similar, but no red malar stripe. _Hab._ Argentina and Patagonia. The species commonly called _Carpintero_ in the Argentine country, and ranging south to Patagonia, is one of a group of the Picidæ of South America which diverge considerably in habits from the typical Woodpeckers. On trees they usually perch horizontally and crosswise, like ordinary birds, and only occasionally cling vertically to trunks of trees, using the tail as a support. They also seek their food more on the ground than on trees, in some cases not at all on trees, and they also breed oftener in holes in banks or cliffs than in the trunks of trees. As Darwin remarks in 'The Origin of Species,' in his chapter on Instinct, these birds have, to some slight extent, been modified structurally in accordance with their less arboreal habits, the beak being weaker, the rectrices less stiff, and the legs longer than in other Woodpeckers. In South Brazil and Bolivia the _Colaptes campestris_ represents this group, in Chili _C. pitius_, and in the Argentine country _C. agricola_.