HAWKS 145 



same tactics. He always chose as resting-places stumps 

 or branches which his plumage resembled, and he assumed 

 an attitude so suggestive of a piece of wood that I would 

 certainly have passed him by had I not been watching 

 his movements and seen him alight. 



Many other birds are seen quite close to the houses, or 

 in the clearing around, which may be looked for in vain 

 in the gloomy forest beyond. For there are many kinds 

 of birds with socialistic principles who find life easier in 

 the neighbourhood of man, where they can appropriate 

 a share of the results of his labours, than in the wilderness 

 where they would have to depend entirely on their own 

 exertions. Of the smaller birds, whose biggest offence is 

 petty larceny on a limited scale, the man who tills the 

 soil and rears poultry does not speak with bitterness ; 

 but start him on chicken-hawks or the large rice-bird, 

 and you will be able to add something to your swearing 

 vocabulary. Though most members of the hawk family 

 have a fondness for poultry, there is one species on the 

 Caura, called the Guaco, that has earned for itself the 

 unrelenting enmity of those who like to see the domestic 

 fowl knocking about their premises. When I heard some 

 of the anecdotes illustrating the cunning of this bird of 

 prey when he has fixed upon a district where he intends 

 to carry on a series of operations, I could not but compare 

 his proceedings with those of a class of Trinidad vagabond 

 who is cursed in a similar manner with an incorrigible 

 weakness for the contents of other people's fowl-houses. 

 For both culprits the punishment is severe. The biped 

 without feathers gets six months and thirty-six lashes : 

 the other is treated as heretics used to be in the good old 

 days of the auto-da-fe. Doha Antonia told me that one 

 Guaco had eaten dozens of her fowls before he was 



