OPEN CLEARING AND SECONDGROWTH 67 



Besides these, two pigeons made this their home, the 

 rufous and the grey-fronted, feeding on the fruit of small 

 berry trees and building their nests among the tangles of 

 razor-grass. The little guan or hanaqua sang its chorus in 

 pairs in the early morning. Rufous cuckoos slipped silently 

 through the branches and their cousins, the smooth-billed 

 anis or witch-birds almost typify the clearing to our mem- 

 ory, so ubiquitous and individual were they. Of the passer- 

 ine birds, the dominant forms were flycatchers and we count- 

 ed nine species as quite characteristic of the clearing. Three 

 were kiskadees, the great Guiana, small-billed and the lesser. 

 Then came grey-headed kingbirds, streaked and varied fly- 

 catchers, yellow-breasted elanias, and the grey and the spot- 

 ted tody-flycatchers. Yellow warblers, apparently identical 

 with those of our northern woodlands, sang and fed in com- 

 pany with black and lesser white-shouldered tanagers, bril- 

 liant moriche and black-throated orioles. 



Lastly came a few forms of great interest, strays from 

 the jungle, which, after becoming specialized and adapted 

 to a wholly aboreal, scansorial life, had, during late genera- 

 tions, undergone a readaptation to a perching existence. 

 These were the brown and the yellow- throated synallaxes 

 or spirietails, aberrant forms of the woodhewers of the jun- 

 gle. The checkbird had also long deserted the haunts of 

 its numerous antbird cousins and taken up life in the semi- 

 open. 



This completes the tale of the peculiar birds of this 

 area, a hasty review which will serve to emphasize the radical 

 departure from the jungle types so close at hand. As to 

 their songs and courtships, their nests and eggs, their molts 

 and their personalities in general, we made a beginning, an 

 excellent beginning. In the future we hope to complete 

 these life-histories and to record all that a human being may 

 learn through keen and sympathetic observation. 



