Volume 21, Plate VII / Ornithology (Birds)

Crested Black Water-Chat

Blechropus cristatus

A bird wholly black glossed with bluish, excepting the pure white bases of the inner primary webs, adorned with an elegant crest of long, narrow feathers slightly recurved at their tips, with black bill and legs and a lengthened, rounded, fan shaped tail. Its strong, long legs mark it among the water chats rather than the tyrants, and the graduated tail suggests it forms the type passing into the fantails.