BIRD Ml K or 15ART1CA S);i 



known to us. To c'm))liasize l)v reiteratint>> wluit I have writ- 

 ten, in otliei- words we dra^' a tiny dredge along tlie ocean 

 bed, and painfully di-aw to the surface a few fragmentary 

 oriianisnis, which ol'ten burst in our I'arified element. We 

 see a company of iluttering forms high overhead — one to 

 two hundred feet above the ground — and our guns bring 

 down a swirling, bedi-aggled Muft' which was a bird, whose 

 throat uttered one of the strange songs which we just heard, 

 whose nest and eggs or young are somewhere fai- aloft. VV^e 

 hold in oui- hand an instant's cross-section of an exceechngly 

 interesting life, which in the jungle played a part full of 

 signiticance. And we realize that until we offset gravitation 

 and establish stations of observation in the tops of some of 

 these giant trees, our ignorance of this roof of the jungle 

 must remain complete. 



Future work ^vill reveal some very interesting facts in 

 regard to the home ranges of jungle birds. For the first 

 week or two all seemed more or less confused, and the time 

 and place of meeting with definite species a matter of luck. 

 But little by little clarity came from the twilight, and I be- 

 gan to ])erceive system and regularity. A certain bend in 

 the trail always revealed a quartet of white-capped mana- 

 kins, regardless of their breeding season, and toward dusk 

 I was certain of finding them working their w^ay toward a 

 dense tangle of bush ropes. In the mid-day heat, on the 

 contrary, they almost invariably perched in a certain medium 

 tree, open to the east at the edge of the jungle. Parrots 

 were even more definite about the time and place of roosting, 

 but their feeding habits were less sure. The wandering 

 flocks of small birds seemed to be the least definite, they 

 appeared to wander at will, but comj^aring accumulated 

 notes I began to see a certain rhythm of direction, an orien- 

 tation to points of the compass and to the beginning and the 

 end of the day w^hich assuredly had some meaning. When 

 I think of the searchers for carrion, of the weaving flight 

 of swifts insect-hunting in the open sky, of the followers of 



