418 IN THE WILDS OF SOUTH AMERICA 



be frightened into taking wing, and the individuals we had 

 selected could be picked off. We wanted birds in good 

 plumage only, and this manner of hunting gave us the op- 

 portunity of selecting each individual separately. There 

 were shovellers and cinnamon teal without number; the 

 handsome males, in brightest plumage, were dashing around 

 the inconspicuously colored females, swimming low and 

 with bills flat on the water; usually there were not more 

 than a dozen or fifteen in a party. Then there were scaups, 

 tree-ducks, pintails, blackheads, and rosy-bills. The latter 

 were wary; they always passed high above, in large flocks, 

 and the rushing sound made by their wings could be heard 

 a long distance away. 



Dabbling in the mud-banks along the edge of the marsh 

 were flocks of from four to thirty large white geese (Casa- 

 roba). Black-necked swans, singly or in small groups, sailed 

 about majestically. Of the two birds the geese were the 

 more graceful, and by far the more beautiful. The swans 

 were not very wild, but when the boat approached they be- 

 gan to utter shrill "kee-wee's"; finally they would launch 

 into the air with a great deal of flapping, beating the water 

 with powerful strokes of the wings, and keeping up their 

 cry all the while. When we neared a flock of geese, they 

 began to patrol the water ahead, swimming back and forth, 

 and eying us with suspicion; they swam well out of the 

 water, with a graceful carriage of the head and neck, and 

 uttered constant loud, penetrating cries that sounded like 

 " honk-honk-queenk." What is more thrilling than the clear, 

 piercing challenge of this spirit of the wild? Wafted across 

 the watery waste on the wings of a crisp autumn wind, it 

 comes as a message from the regions of snow and ice — a 

 foreboding of the bleak, dark days to follow. I never tired 

 of hearing it, and lost more than one shot at a flock coming 

 over from another direction because I was so interested in 

 listening to the fascinating notes of other birds ahead of us. 

 When they finally decided to take wing, they rose from the 

 water quickly and gracefully, and flew at great speed, 



