252 



BIRDS AND MAN 



a majority of cases the birds that exhibit terror and 

 fly into cover or sit closely have never actually seen 

 that winged thunderbolt, the peregrine falcon, strike 

 down a duck or pigeon, sending out a small cloud of 

 feathers ; or even a harrier or sparrowhawk pulling 

 out and scattering the feathers of a bird it has 

 captured, but a tradition exists among them that the 

 sight of flying feathers signifies danger to bird life. 



When I was in the young barbarian stage, and 

 my playmates were gaucho boys on horseback on 

 the pampas, they taught me to catch partridges in 

 their simple way with a slender cane twenty to 

 twenty-five feet long, a running noose at its tip made 

 from the fine pliant shaft of a rhea's wing feather. 

 The bird was not a real partridge though it looks like 

 it, but was the common or spotted tinamu of the 

 plains, Nothura maculosa, as good a table bird as our 

 partridge. Our method was, when we flushed a 

 bird, to follow its swift straight flight at a gallop, 

 and mark the exact spot where it dropped to earth 

 and vanished in the grass, then to go round the spot 

 examining the ground until the tinamu was detected 

 in spite of his protective colouring sitting close among 

 the dead and fading grass and herbage. The cane 

 was put out, the circle narrowed until the small 

 noose was exactly over the bird's head, so that 



