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Miss Innis Dorrien-Smith,



trees. The birds would take very little notice of my presence, would

hover before the flowers, disappear like a flash and reappear as

suddenly.


More to the south, on my way to the Nakuel Huapi lake,

crossing the Cordilleras again, I fell in constantly with humming¬

birds of the same species. Thus for instance they were quite common

on the fuchsias near the torrent behind Peulla on the lake Todos

los Santos.


In the splendid mixed forest vegetation between Puerto Montt

and Puerto Yaras I again met the same bird and, later on, one day

taking' a walk along the rocks which border the sea near Corral I

was surprised to see these birds as active as ever during an icy cold

windy evening amongst the flowering bushes.


Iii North Western Tierra del Fuego, where there was not

much vegetation of a kind to attract humming-birds, I did not meet

any, nor do I remember having seen them along the Smith Channel.


A little south of Queilen, on the east coast of Chilae, they

were very conspicuous near the big fuchsia bushes which grew there

near the sea-shore. It being the beginning of winter, the weather

at the time was very cold.



THE AMERICAN BITTERN IN CAPTIVITY.


By Innis Dorrien-Smith.


I kept an American bittern in an aviary at Tresco, Isles of

Scilly, for six years, from 1903 to 1909. The bird was caught in

the island of Bryher, the most westerly of these islands, and was

picked up by one of the inhabitants in an exhausted condition. A

strong south-east wind had been blowing here for some days, but,

in spite of that, it had struggled on to land from its long journey

across the Atlantic from America. No wonder it was exhausted

after a flight of 3000 miles !


Knowing I had various tame birds, the man who found it

sent over to let me know, thinking it must be one of my birds that

had escaped, and soon it arrived in a basket, having done its best to

peck out the eye of the rescuer.



