174 A NATURALIST IN THE GUI AN AS 



and salted meat for the sancocho ^ was soon simmering 

 above it, with a batch of hungry men hanging around 

 chaffing each other or cracking coarse jokes to while the 

 time away. I wandered along the bank with my fidus 

 Achates, Pedro Hospedales, the best hunter and bird- 

 collector I have ever employed. In places where the 

 sloping bank was of soft sand there were holes resembling 

 those made by the land-crab, but these holes were not 

 the work of crabs, but of a species of flycatcher with a 

 short tail, not uncommon on the islands in the rapids. 

 I made Pedro dig along one of the tunnels with his hunt- 

 ing-knife, but although he followed it for more than three 

 feet he did not reach the bottom. I would have liked to 

 have seen what sort of nest the birds make at the end of 

 the tunnels. The Indians, although well aware of this 

 habit of these birds of burrowing into the ground for the 

 purpose of nesting, could not say whether the holes were 

 used only once or repeatedly. I am inclined to believe, 

 judging by the labour the excavation of these deep 

 tunnels must entail, that they are used more than once 

 by the same birds. This strange habit of excavating deep 

 tunnels in the ground at the end of which they build 

 their nests and lay their eggs is shared by the jacamars, 

 kingfishers, and motmots. Parrots act in a somewhat 

 similar manner, for although they do not dig burrows in 

 the ground for nesting purposes, they always lay their 

 eggs in the hollows of trees. The unsightly vulture,'^ pro- 

 tected by law in Trinidad because it is supposed to assist 

 in scavenging the town of Port of Spain, also builds its 

 nest in hollow trees like the parrot, and for this purpose it 

 usually selects some tree in the forest far from the town. 



' The national dish, a soup made of vegetables with meat or fish. In 

 the northern mountain range and along the coast where beef is scarce or 

 .ez23cnBive the sancocho is usually made of fish. In the llanos beef is used. 



* Cathartcs atrata. 



