BIRD LIFE OF BARTICA 115 



while fork-tailed flycatchers crowded into a single mango 

 until every branch was trembling with their flutterings. 

 The caciques, like the rails, prefer to roost near home, and 

 just to use up surplus energy the male would build a separ- 

 ate dummy nest, without an egg cavity, or else a little awn- 

 ing of interlaced fibres at one side of his rightful nest. Here 

 he would sleep while his mate brooded deep in the purse 

 below. I believe the moriche orioles did the same thing, but 

 I had only half-proofs of this. 



The nesting season and the broods of tropical birds are 

 fraught with significance, and I have chosen to treat separ- 

 ately of them, delaying publication until my notes are round- 

 ed out and my theories vindicated. 



The completion of my fragmentary notes on these many 

 phases of bird life in the tropics will, I trust, yield data of 

 still greater importance, and wider application. My notes 

 on courtship and fighting this year were exceedingly meagre. 

 The most common courtships which we noticed were the 

 wing-plays and dances of jacanas, the dignified pheasant- 

 like display of the sun-bittern and the contortions of the 

 giant caciques. In the clearing one never tired of watching 

 the comical bouncing dance, with vocal accompaniment, of 

 the little pee-zing grassbird. My isolated notes hint that 

 there are many courtships as complicated and worthy of 

 investigation as that of the powies or curassows. * 



As to fighting, from the point of view of rivalry, the 

 hummingbirds easily held first place. Two seemed hardly 

 ever to meet without a passage at arms, often clinching in 

 mid-air and whirling around as they fell, like a single wound- 

 ed bird. When all the hummingbird world seemed gathered 

 at the flowering of the cashew trees, some of them would 

 forego feeding hour after hour, so busy were they, driving 

 away others from the tree. Certain species seemed to hold 

 in especial hatred certain other species, while still others, 

 both larger and smaller, were allowed to pass and feed un- 



'Our Search for a Wilderness, pp. 332-338. 



