CHACHALACA 345 



A loud gobble just at dusk led us to tbeir cover, and crouching low to get the 

 sky for a background we could see the big forms coming in singly or in twos 

 or threes, and hear the strong wing beats as they passed on to alight in the 

 huisaches out in the water. When the noise of their wings and the rattling of 

 branches had subsided, with a few gobbles from different quarters they settled 

 down for the night. The next morning, as the darkness began to thin and 

 a light streak appeared in the east, a long loud gobble broke the stillness, 

 followed by gobble after gobble from awakening birds in different parts of the 

 bottoms, and before it was half daylight the heavy whish whish of big wings 

 passed overhead, as the turkeys with strong, rapid flight took their way back 

 to the higher ridges. 



Family CRACIDAE, Curassows, Guans, Chachalacas 



ORTALIS VETULA VETULA (Wagler) 

 CHACHALACA 



HABITS 



This curious and exceedingly interesting bird, the chachalaca, 

 brings a touch of Central American bird life into extreme southern 

 Texas in the lower valley of the Rio Grande, where so many other 

 Mexican species reach the northern limits of their ranges and where 

 the fauna and flora are more nearly Mexican than North American. 



On May 27, 1923, 1 spent a good long day, from before sunrise until 

 after sunset, in the haunts of the chachalaca, w T ith R. D. Camp, 

 George F. Simmons, and E. W. Farmer, the last named a chachalaca 

 hunter of many years' experience, who knows more about this curious 

 bird than any man I have ever met. The locality to which he 

 guided us was the famous Resaca de la Palm a, where so many other 

 observers have made the acquaintance of the chachalaca, only a few 

 miles outside of the city of Brownsville, Tex. This and other resacas 

 in the vicinity are the remains of old river beds of the Rio Grande, 

 which from time to time in the past has overflowed its banks or 

 changed its course, cutting these winding channels through the wild, 

 open country, chaparral, or forest. Some of these channels were dry 

 or nearly so, but most of them contained more or less water below 

 their gently sloping grassy borders. Above the banks were dense 

 forests of large trees, huisache, ebony, hackberry, and mesquite, with 

 a thick undergrowth of thorny shrubbery, tangles of vines, and an 

 occasional palmetto or palm tree. In other places almost impene- 

 trable thickets of chaparral lined the banks, with its forbidding 

 tangle of thorny shrubs of various kinds, numerous cactuses and 

 yuccas. These forests and thickets were teeming with bird life. 

 Along the edges of the watercourses the pretty little Texas king- 

 fishers were seen flying over the water or perched on some dead 

 snag. In some small trees overgrown with Usnea moss the dainty 

 little Sennett's warblers were flitting about, reminding me of our 



