OPEN CLEARING AND SECONDGROWTH 61 



The bushes at the edge of the compound teemed with 

 bird life all foreign to the jungle at our back. Whenever 

 we went to the Hills we listened to the jubilant, rollicking- 

 songs of the Guiana house wrens, but these were never 

 heard at Kalacoon. This was the case for several weeks, 

 but one morning we heard, not one, but several birds sing- 

 ing at once. A wave of wrens had overflowed Kalacoon 

 during the night, and now in the early morning were feed- 

 ing, and singing, and climbing about the grass stems per- 

 fectly at home. We had witnessed the arrival of a new 

 species, old birds and several full-grown young. Within 

 three days they had dispossessed some finches, nest, eggs 

 and all, and had begun nests of their own. 



The arrival of wrens at Kalacoon was an event slight 

 in itself, but which seemed to me full of significance, when 

 I realized that in such fashion birds extend their ranges over 

 the surface of the earth. It was quite different from the 

 small flock of sandpipers which appeared suddenly along 

 the creek. They were migrants, here today, off to the far 

 north tomorrow. But the house wrens of Guiana are per- 

 manent residents, and once they have taken possession in 

 their fierce little masterful wren fashion, they elect to remain 

 until the traces of man's labors have wholly vanished. Many 

 years ago in this very region I have recorded * how these 

 God-birds, as the natives call them, often cling to a deserted 

 Indian clearing until the jungle has choked it from existence. 

 The coming of the wrens truly typified the advance of a 

 species, one step in that progress which has peopled every 

 continent with its thousands of species of birds. 



From the lofty outlook of Kalacoon compound a tre- 

 mendous sweep of sky was visible, and it was very seldom 

 that this was wholly free from bird life. Most of these aerial 

 species were not peculiar to the clearing, however, but 

 hawked about over the jungle as well, and probably roosted 

 somewhere within its confines. Exceptions to this were barn 



'Our Search for a Wilderness, pp. 307-308. 



