160 TROPICAL WILD LIFE IN BRITISH GUIANA 



with pollen and too busy to stop a second in their day-long- 

 labor. This little area held very strange creatures, some of 

 which we saw even in our few hours' search. Four-eyed fish 

 skittered over the water, pale as the ghosts of fish, and when 

 quiet, showing only as a pair of bubbly eyes. Still more 

 weird hairy caterpillars wriggled their way through the mud- 

 dy, brackish current — aquatic larvae of a small moth which 

 I had not seen since I found them in the trenches at Para. 

 The only sound at this time of day was a drowsy, but pene- 

 trating tr-r-r-r-r-p! made by a green-bodied, green-legged 

 grasshopper of good size whose joy in life seemed to be to 

 lie lengthwise upon a pimpler branch, and skriek violently 

 at frequent intervals, giving his wings a frantic flutter at 

 each utterance, and slowly encircling the stem. 



In such environment the hoatzin lives and thrives, and 

 thanks to the strong body odor has existed from time 

 immemorial in the face of terrific handicaps. The odor is 

 a strong musky one, not particularly disagreeable. I 

 searched my memory at every whiff for something of which 

 it vividly reminded me, and at last the recollection came to 

 me — the smell, delectable and fearfully exciting in former 

 years — of elephants at a circus, and not altogether elephants 

 either — but a compound of one-sixth sawdust, another part 

 peanuts, another of strange animals and three-sixths sway- 

 ing elephants. That to my mind, exactly describes the odor 

 of hoatzin as I sensed it among these alien surroundings! 



As I have mentioned, the nest of the hoatzin was in- 

 variably built over the water, and we shall later discover the 

 reason for this. The nests were sometimes only four feet 

 above high water, or equally rarely, at a height of forty to 

 fifty feet. Six to fifteen feet included the zone of four-fifths 

 of the nests of these birds. They varied much in solidity, 

 some being frail and loosely put together, the dry dead 

 sticks which composed them, dropping apart almost at a 

 touch. Usually they were as well knitted as a heron's, and 

 in about half the cases consisted of a recent nest built upon 



