310 IN THE WILDS OF SOUTH AMERICA 



something of its habits. Bates records having seen a number 

 during his eleven years of exploration, and on one occa- 

 sion he was attacked by a flock after he had wounded one 

 of them. We therefore considered it an unusually good 

 streak of fortune to find a large flock inhabiting a section 

 of the forest several miles from the mission. They were 

 wary, nervous creatures, and spent their time in the top 

 of tall trees from which one of our men succeeded in shoot- 

 ing several with arrows before the remainder took alarm 

 and flew away; they never returned to the locality. The 

 bird is black above, with yellow underparts barred with 

 black; the feathers on the top of the head are flattened and 

 curled, resembling shining scales, and are drawn together 

 to form a ridge. On the throat and breast the brilliant 

 yellow feathers are tipped with glossy black dots, resem- 

 bling beads of jet. Unfortunately they were not nesting, 

 but the Indians reported having found the two white eggs 

 in cavities in the taller trees. Another bird not frequently 

 encountered is the giant frogmouth (Nyctibius), which, 

 while not so rare, perhaps, is seldom seen, as it is nocturnal 

 in habits and spends the days squatting horizontally upon 

 some thick branch, where it resembles a gray lichen, or is 

 altogether invisible. When the time for domestic cares 

 arrives the bird lays a single white egg on the branch which 

 has served as its perch, or at the junction of a limb and the 

 tree-trunk, without making any sort of a nest. Doubtless 

 many eggs roll off this precarious location and are broken. 

 It feeds upon beetles and insects which are caught on the 

 wing, and some observers say that it also catches small 

 birds; this latter I am inclined to question. One individual 

 that we collected was twenty-two inches long, with an ex- 

 panse of wings of thirty inches. The mouth when opened 

 measured five inches from tip to tip of the bill, and was 

 three inches wide; but the oesophagus was less than half 

 an inch in diameter, which would prevent it from swallow- 

 ing anything larger than a humming-bird. 



The nights at the mission were always pleasant. The 



