Birds of Uruguay. 187 



included a stratagem I never saw practised before. The bird 

 flew away very low over the ground, almost touching it, its 

 short legs hanging down, tail dropped and slightly spread 

 out, and generally with the appearance of flying with diffi- 

 culty and being weighed down by something carried in its 

 feet. In fact it looked exactly as if it was carrying off one 

 of its young. I confess to having been once utterly deceived, 

 and to having made a frantic dash after the bird to cause it 

 to drop the supposed passenger; this was after we had moved 

 away a little from the young and turned our backs on them 

 for a moment, and the bird had come back and alighted close 

 to the spot. However, on going to the place again, I found 

 both young untouched. It is highly probable that the 

 Dormildn does habitually move its young when disturbed, 

 and that on this occasion it perhaps had not time to pick one 

 up when first disturbed, or the second time either, and yet 

 from force of habit went oflp as if it was really carrying a 

 pichon ; or it may really ha.ye pt'etended to be doing so in order 

 to deceive us, and to induce us to follow and lose the place 

 where the young were. To attempt to decide this would be 

 to build up one of those insufficiently-founded theories which 

 are only too common nowadays. Whether the young were 

 eventually moved or not I do not know, as I left for another 

 part of the district at that time. I picked up the fragments 

 of one egg. On the 28tli November we found in the open 

 camp, on particularly bare ground at Sta. Ana, a young bird 

 which could just fly ; it retained the vinous shade on the head 

 and had a huge flesh-coloured mouth. An attempt to keep it 

 alive failed. Two fresh eggs were taken at Sta. Elena in the 

 last days of November. The eggs have the ground-colour 

 white, washed with pinkish brown, and are marked all over 

 with small loose blotches of warm brown ; there are some 

 slight undermarkings of grey. The eggs are subject to some* 

 variation, the markings being sometimes very small and less 

 plainly defined ; some eggs have a pinker shade than others. 

 On the 31st January, after a wet morning, about 4,30 p.m., 

 with a close, damp, hot atmosphere preceding thunder, the air 

 being full of swarms of flying ants, most unpleasant to ride 



