92 TROPICAL WILD LIFE IN BRITISH GUIANA 



York and Xew Jersey. Here it was unusual to find an iso- 

 lated bird, kingfishers and hawks excepted. Either its mate 

 was with it, or it was companioned by a small flock of birds 

 of mirelated but friendly species. In the jungle, which I am 

 so often assured is well nigh devoid of life, I found birds 

 much more abundant than in temperate regions. To formu- 

 late a still more definite statement, whenever I returned 

 after a long tramp in the jungle, whether along animal or 

 Indian trails, or by compass or sun through the untracked 

 "bush," I recalled more birds than would appear in an aver- 

 age walk in northern woods. Besides actual preponderance 

 of numbers, the breeding season had something to do with 

 this. The period of nesting varied so much in difi^erent spe- 

 cies, that in any month, certain forms were found free from 

 nesting cares and gathered into flocks, and these, whether 

 gleaning from the very highest tree-tops or from mid- 

 growth, filled the jungle with movement and sound. In the 

 rubber clearing where weeds and grass seeds were a perpet- 

 ual crop, bird life was even more abundant, and at times the 

 finches flew up before one like crowds of grasshoppers. 



No niche or stratum of jungle was free from birds. 

 Some species roamed through and over it at will, others 

 were confined to certain definite areas. Some spent their 

 life on the ground and never perched on twig or branch. 

 Others clung to bark from birth to death, their road in life 

 a never-ending series of vertical ascents; some spent the 

 hours of light in mid-air so high that to them the jungle 

 must have appeared as a lawn of grass does to us. There 

 were birds w^hich penetrated the jungle only at the demand 

 of sleep or honey, as certain swifts and hummingbirds, others 

 sped thither at the sunmions of carrion. Some attended the 

 course of army ants, content to be guided by the erratic 

 migration of these insects. Finally there were those unrep- 

 resented in any northern zone which lived out tlieir existence 

 among the highest tree-tops, courting, nesting, feeding, 

 sleeping in an aerial Avorld which at present is all but un- 



