Nine-banded armadillos in sandy pasture country. 
Phote by Miller 
They may cur] up for protection but also may 
bound off at a run as swift as a rabbit’s — as surprising to the observer as to see a turtle gallop away 
highly specialized creature and _ practi- 
cally helpless when once its peculiarly 
specialized traits are effectively nullified 
by an opponent. The mussurama killed 
the snake and devoured it by the simple 
process of crawling outside it. Many 
snakes will not eat if people interfere 
with them, but the mussurama had no 
prejudices in this respect. We wanted 
to take a photograph of it while eating, 
so I took both snakes up and had them 
photographed against a white cloth 
while the feast went on uninterruptedly. 
Birds and mammals 
chiefly, however. 
interested me 
I am only an amateur 
ornithologist but I saw a great deal there 
that would be of interest to any of us 
who care for birds. For instance there 
are two hundred and thirteen families of 
birds very plentiful there, either wholly 
unknown to us, or at least very few of 
them known. 
The most conspicuous birds I saw were 
members of the family of tyrant fly- 
catchers, like our kingbird, great crested 
flycatcher and wood pewee. All are 
birds that perch and swoop for insects. 
One species, the bientevido, is a big bird 
like our kingbird, but fiercer and more 
powerful than any northern kingbird. 
One day I saw him catching fish and 
little tadpoles and also J found that he 
would sometimes catch small mice. 
Another kind of tyrant, the red-backed 
44 
tyrant, is a black bird with reddish on 
the middle of the back. We saw this 
species first out on the bare Patagonian 
plains. It runs fast over the ground 
exactly like our pippit or longspur. 
Curved-bill wood-hewers, birds the 
size and somewhat the coloration of 
veeries, but with long, slender sickle- 
bills were common about the gardens 
and houses. 
Most of the birds build large nests. 
The oven-birds build big, domed nests of 
Telegraph poles offer splendid 
opportunities for building nests. Some- 
times for miles every telegraph pole 
would have an oven-bird’s nest upon it. 
These birds come around the houses. 
They look a little bit like wood thrushes 
and are very interesting in that they have 
all kinds of individual ways. The ex- 
ceedingly beautiful honey creepers are 
like little clusters of jet. 
mud. 
They get so 
familiar that they come into the house 
and hop on the edge of the sugar bowl. 
The people living on many of the 
ranches in Brazil make us rather ashamed 
for our own people. ‘The ranchmen pro- 
tect the birds and it is possible to see 
great jabiru storks nesting not fifty yards 
from the houses, and not shy. 
Most of the birds in Brazil are not 
musical although some of them have 
very pretty whistles. The oven-bird has 
an attractive call. The bell-bird of the 
