126 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



The mosquitoes were rarely troublesome, although in the 

 daytime we were sometimes bothered by numbers of biting 

 horse-flies. The bird life was wonderful. One of the char- 

 acteristic sights we were always seeing was that of a num- 

 ber of heads and necks of cormorants and snake-birds, 

 without any bodies, projecting above water, and disap- 

 pearing as the steamer approached. Skimmers and thick- 

 billed tern were plentiful here right in the heart of the con- 

 tinent. In addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic 

 and most interesting resident of most of South America, 

 we found tiny red-legged plover which also breed and are 

 at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between 

 closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers 

 and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round 

 in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; 

 and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, 

 and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold 

 temperate regions of the far north, now in the cold tem- 

 perate regions of the south. These latter wide-wandering 

 birds of the seashore and the river bank pass most of their 

 lives in regions of almost perpetual sunlight. They spend 

 the breeding season, the northern summer, in the land of 

 the midnight sun, during the long arctic day. They then 

 fly for endless distances down across the north temperate 

 zone, across the equator, through the lands where the days 

 and nights are always of equal length, into another hemi- 

 sphere, and spend another summer of long days and long 

 twilights in the far south, where the antarctic winds cool 

 them, while their nesting home, at the other end of the 

 world, is shrouded beneath the iron desolation of the polar 

 night. 



