OPEN CLKARING AND SilCONDGROWTH Go 



eiufht of the blackbirds had established themselves, but the 

 yellow-heads, always associated with them on the coast, had 

 not vet found their wav hitlier. Four kinurishers drew sus- 

 tenance from the little creek, the tjreat o^rev and the o-reat 

 green, the pygmy and the spotted. Ground doves were ubicj- 

 uitous and perhaps the most abundant of the clearing birds, 

 but their favorite haunts were the sandy roads, where they 

 trotted along in droves, two species of them, the grey and 

 the talpacoti ground doves. Here. too. the white-necked 

 nighthawks came at twiliyht and called their lonesome icho- 

 are-you. and performed their weird dances in the moonlight, 

 sometimes tifty or more together. 



Passinuf down to the banks of the ^lazaruni and the 

 extent of sand and muddy beach exposed at low tide, we 

 surprised the great-billed terns occasionally flying over, or 

 stopping to snatch at the host of winged termites rismg from 

 some dead stump. Snakebirds perched along the edge or 

 dropped ofl' and swam half-innnersed. Five herons and an 

 ibis tished along shore, the cocoi. little blue and agami her- 

 ons, American and snowy egrets and the curious Guiana 

 ibises. Two swallows were essentially fluvicoline. the varie- 

 gated and the half-belted, but their frequent exciu-sious to 

 the clearing in pursuit of insect food, gave them a right to 

 inclusion in our list. 



There remained the dense slii'ubbery and the second- 

 ffrowth itself, and mdeed the rubber trees also, where these 

 had waxed tall and strong. In such places there dwelt an 

 interestnig assemblage of more than twenty-flve species of 

 birds foimd nowhere else in this region. The only subdivi- 

 sions I can make are superticial and unequal. One was a 

 bird of prey, one wholly terrestrial, and another nocturnal. 

 The tirst was the four-banded sparrowhawk. which hunted 

 both in the rubber and the secondgro^^"th. The gi'ound bu'd 

 was the pileated tinamou whose plaintive trill rang out night 

 and morning. The bird of night was the giant goatsucker 

 or poor-me-one. 



