GUIRA CUCKOO 19 
both to sight and smell. There is something 
ludicrous in the notes of these young birds, resem- 
bling as they do the shrill half-hysterical laughter 
of a female exhausted by over-indulgence in mirth. 
One summer there was a large brood in a tree close 
to my home, and every time we heard the parent 
bird hastening to her nest with food in her beak, 
and uttering her plaintive cries, we used to run to 
the door to hear them. As soon as the old bird 
reached the nest they would burst forth into such 
wild extravagant peals and continue them so long 
that we could not but think it a rare amusement to 
listen to them. 
According to Azara the Guira Cuckoo in Paraguay 
has very friendly relations with the Ani (Crotophaga 
ani), the birds consorting together in one flock, and 
even laying their eggs in one nest; and he affirms 
that he has seen nests containing eggs of both species. 
These nests were probably brought to him by his 
Indian collectors, who were in the habit of deceiving 
him, and it is more than probable that in this matter 
they were practising on his credulity; though it is 
certain that birds of different species do sometimes 
lay in one nest, as I have found—the Common Teal 
and the Tinamu for instance. I also doubt very 
much that the bird is ever polygamous, as Azara 
suspected; but it frequently wastes eggs, and its 
procreant habits are sometimes very irregular and 
confusing, as the following case will show: 
A flock numbering about sixteen individuals 
passed the winter in the trees about my home, and 
