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Pezopetes,Mar. 29,1960 II  3

but they get their food by scratching. They scratch, therefore, by hopping, using both feet together! The result is that they bob back and forth like mechanical toys, as if they were on some sort of rockers!
  
Almost all the time the birds fed this morning they were quite silent (to my ears at least). They didn't even utter faint "Trit" CN's.
  
The one call they did utter occurred very early in the morning, around 7:00 a.m., when I first began to watch them. When I first came upon them, they were feeding together on the forest floor. One bird flew away into a thicket almost immediately. The other one stayed behind for a few minutes. Just sat & preened. Eventually it flew off to the same thicket that its mate had entered. Immediately I heard a soft twittering warble, rather ventriloquial (in the sense of being difficult to locate precisely),coming from this thicket. His "song" was quite reminiscent of the "greeting" song of the Yellow-thighed Finch, but still distinctly different. I am sure that it must have been a "greeting" song uttered by one of the Big-foots. (I am sure that there were no other birds in the same thicket — and especially sure that there were no Yellow-thighs there.)Their song differed from the usual song of the Yellow-thighs in being more "regular", containing a lower variety of notes. It is very difficult to transcribe adequately but the following might be a very rough, diagrammatic; schema:
 
"Tikatikatikatikakeea keea keea keea."
Some definite difference between the first and second halves of the phrases.
  
This was not repeated.