70 SOME BIRDS OF THE CANARY ISLANDS 



his own lively disposition in the sombre woods besides his 

 own kith and kin, unless it be the Tenerife Robin, who is 

 nearly always hunting for food among the pine needles 

 on the ground, and when he has finished he just flies 

 up to some little loop of a branch, where he sharpens 

 his beak and waits till he is hungry again. Not much 

 of a companion this, after all, for the lively Frailesco, 

 who is always on the alert, never still for a moment, 

 and seems perpetually to be trying to have his head 

 and his tail in the same place at the same time. He 

 spares time occasionally from his bustling life to come 

 out into a patch of sunshine which carpets the ground 

 here and there amid the gloom, and search a flower for 

 insect food, hanging head downwards from a dependent 

 twig ; sometimes, in his impetuous way, he shifts his 

 position on to the flower itself, which of course breaks 

 down with his weight, so he scurries off again into the 

 woods. There are hundreds of these little birds far 

 up in the tall trees, and their incessant chattering may 

 continually be heard. 



Another resident in the forest is the Kite, Villano, 

 which may often be seen in the air as he glides over 

 the tall tree-tops, steering himself with his forked tail, 

 and giving now and then his peculiar mewing whistle. 

 He settles for the most part on an old lightning-struck 

 tree close to his nest, which is built near the top of one 

 of the tallest pines, a tree some six feet across at the 

 base. On the withered branch of this tree he waits for 

 us, and when at length we have scrambled up over the 

 slippery bed of pine needles, not without many back- 

 sliclings, his attitude seems to say, " Well ? " 



He is quite right, for it is an impossible tree to climb, 



