NOTES ON HOATZINS 



157 



Photo lyW.B. 



FIG. 37. MUCKA-MUCKA, CHARACTERISTIC GROWTH OF THE 

 HOATZINS' HAUNTS. 



A bird in a cage cannot escape and may be found month 

 after month wherever the cage is placed; a stuffed bird in 

 a case may resist dissolution for a century. But when we 

 go to look for the bluebirds which nest in the orchard they 

 may have flown a half-mile away in their search for food; 

 the plover which scurries before us today on the beach may 

 tonight be far away on the first lap of his seven-thousand- 

 mile flight to the southward. The hoatzin's status lies ra- 

 ther with the caged bird. In November, in New York City, 

 an Englishman from British Guiana said to me, "Go to the 

 Berbice River, and at the north end of the town of New 

 Amsterdam in front of Mr. Beckett's house you will find 

 hoatzins." Six months later, as I drove along a tropical river 

 road I saw three hoatzins perched on a low thorn bush at the 



