A WILDERNESS LABORATORY 145 



citement, and thrust his hand into the nest. It 

 was withdrawn and went to his mouth, and 

 down he came. To our impatient, impolite 

 inquiries, he answered only with inarticulate 

 mumblings and grunts. He reached the ground 

 and into his pursed hands carefully regurgitated 

 an egg white, with clustered markings of lav- 

 ender and sepia about the larger end. We 

 looked at each other and grinned. Words 

 seemed superfluous. Later I believe we quieted 

 down and danced some kind of a war-dance. 

 Our feelings had then reached the stage where 

 they could at least be expressed in action. Per- 

 haps it was not altogether the scientific joy of 

 gazing at and possessing the first known egg of 

 the moriche oriole. I know that by sheer per- 

 versity I kept thinking of the narrow-gauge 

 canyon of a city street, as I gloried in this 

 cosmic openness of tropical river and jungle 

 and sunset. Only in an aeroplane have I 

 experienced an equal spatial elation. 



Our bird-nester told us that there was a second 

 egg, and said something about not daring to 

 put two in his mouth lest he slip and swallow 

 both. But later, in a moment of weakness, he 

 admitted the real reason, that he had not the 



