OPEN CLEARING AND SECONDGROWTH 63 



swallows and purple martins, migrants from our own United 

 States. The martins vanished early in March, but we saw 

 barn swallows until mid-June. The brown martins were a 

 puzzle. They were not uncommon in early March, but they 

 vanished with the purples and did not appear again. The 

 swifts and kites and vultures — masters of all the air — were 

 bound by no question of mere jungle or clearing. They 

 wandered wherever they found good hunting. 



Along the edge of the rubber plantation, between it 

 and the secondgrowth, and extending on each side of the 

 wide sandy roads, was a large area which was overrun by 

 a tall, dry, reed-like grass, about three feet in height. This 

 little world had its own particular forms of life which spent 

 most of their time in or near it. I can speak only of the 

 bird citizens, which numbered nine species. Two were rails, 

 the white-necked and the cayenne, which nested in the heart 

 of the dense growth or scurried along the road ahead of us. 

 The remaining birds were finches — all tiny grassbirds; jet 

 black glossy grass-quits, the black-headed pygmy, black and 

 white and chestnut-bellied seedeaters, and the two little 

 great-billed finches known through the colony as twatwa and 

 twatwa slave. 



Near the center of the open clearing the creek spread 

 out in a wide space between two rolling hills, forming a 

 marsh, and here, and along the course of the creek itself 

 lived more than a dozen species, attracted and held there 

 by suitable feeding grounds, either fish or crayfish, or the 

 worms and snails which hid in the muddy shallows. Here, 

 on our arrival, were four migrant waders, Esquimo curlew, 

 yellowlegs, solitary and spotted sandpipers. These soon left 

 for the north, although the latter lingered singly and in 

 family groups for many weeks. Of native marsh birds there 

 were cayenne snipe, spur-winged jacanas, Guiana green her- 

 ons, little boat-tailed grackles, red-breasted blackbirds and 

 the beautiful white-shouldered water tyrants. The jacanas 

 were nesting on Keow Island. A small colony of seven or 



