THE GUACHARO. BIRDS. THE NEW HOLLAND GOATSUCKER. 



279 



is neither dilated nor serrated on its inner margin. The 

 general tint of the plumage is sombre, consisting, as 

 usual in the present family, of a mixture of minute 

 dots of black, brown, grey, and reddish, but marked on 

 the head and neck, and on the wing and tail feathers, 

 with white spots of variable form and size. 



These birds are found in Trinidad, and in several 

 parts of the north of South America. They are noc- 

 turnal birds, and pass the day in the recesses of caverns 

 in the mountains, where they collect in vast bands. 

 Unlike the other species of this family, the Guacharos 

 feed entirely upon fruits and seeds, no insects having 

 ever been met with in their alimentary canal ; the food 

 of the young also consists of the same matters, and 

 hence a great accumulation of fat is produced in them, 

 especially in the peritoneum. This furnishes an excel- 

 lent oil; and the Indians of those parts of South 

 America where the birds occur, destroy great quan- 

 tities of the young every year in order to obtain a 

 supply of this grease. The most noted locality for this 

 oil-harvest is a cavern at Caripe, called from this 

 circumstance the Cuei-a del Guacharo. Into this cave, 

 as Humboldt tells us, the Indians enter once a year, 

 about the festival of St. John. They take with them 

 long poles, with which they destroy all the nests within 

 reach, and thus kill many thousands of the young 

 birds. The nests are found in holes of the walls of 

 the cave. During this process the old birds, as if to 

 defend their broods, sail over the heads of the Indians 

 uttering the most discordant cries. The young birds 

 are immediately opened, and the fat removed from 

 them : it is afterwards melted in clay pots at the 

 entrance of the cavern. The oil thus obtained is 

 semi-fluid, transparent, and inodorous, and so pure that 

 it may be kept more than a year without becoming in 

 the least rancid. It is employed in cooking. 



The annual destruction of these birds is so great, 

 that, as Humboldt remarks, the whole race would soon 

 be extinct, were it not for certain circumstances which 

 favour the preservation of the species. The birds 

 doubtless breed in many caverns which are never visited 

 by the oil-gatherers ; and even in the cavern of Caripe, 

 the voices of these birds are heard in galleries to which 

 the Indians never penetrate, partly perhaps from their 

 inaccessibility, but principally on account of certain 

 superstitious notions connected in their minds with the 

 cave and its inhabitants. Humboldt, describing his 

 visit to the cavern of Caripe, says " We had much 

 trouble in persuading the Indians to pass the anterior 

 portion of the cave, the only part which they frequent 

 in their annual collection of fat. It required all the 

 authority of the padres to make them advance as far 

 as a spot where the ground rises suddenly at an aisgle 

 of sixty degrees, and where the torrent forms a small 

 subterranean cascade. The natives attach mystical 

 ideas to this cavern, inhabited by nocturnal birds. 

 Man, they say, should dread places which are lighted 

 neither by the sun nor by the moon. To go to the 

 Guacharos, is to join one's fathers, to die." 



This celebrated cavern is pierced in a vertical rock : 

 its entrance measures eighty feet in width, and seventy- 

 two feet in height ; and through the cave there runs, 

 as indicated in the above extract, a subterranean 



torrent. For a distance of upwards of four hundred 

 feet, the daylight still struggles with the darkness of 

 the cavern ; and the seeds brought in by the birds to 

 feed their young, but accidentally dropped by the way, 

 germinate in the scanty soil of the floor, producing 

 etiolated plants, which, as Humboldt remarks, might be 

 taken for the phantoms of plants banished from the 

 outer world. Further in, the loud and discordant cries 

 of the Guacharos were heard, repeated and increased by 

 the echoes on every hand. The seeds found in the 

 crops of the young birds opened in the cavern are 

 supposed by the Indians to possess medicinal virtues, 

 and are carefully preserved under the name of Semilla 

 del Guacharo. 



THE NEW HOLLAND GOATSUCKER (^Egotheks 

 Nova; Holkmdm) The remainder of the birds of this 

 family form three genera, the members of which are 

 almost entirely confined to Australia and the islands 

 intervening between that continent and Asia, the 

 majority of the species being natives of Australia. 



The New Holland Goatsucker is a charming little 

 species, measuring only about nine inches in length. 

 It has a very broad depressed bill, of which, however, 

 only the tip projects beyond the forehead, and the 

 whole gape is bordered above with numerous long 

 bristles, many of which are furnished with little barbs. 

 The plumage is mottled with grey and brown, paler 

 beneath ; a greyish white collar runs round the neck, 

 and there is a crescent-shaped spot of the same on the 

 back of the head. The tarsi are long and slender. 

 This species is met with all over the southern parts of 

 Australia, and also in Van Diemen's Land, where it is 

 known, according to Mr. Gould, as the Little Morepork, 

 a name which will be explained when we come to 

 describe the Podargi. It is a somewhat solitary bird, 

 more than two being rarely found together ; its habits 

 are nocturnal, and it feeds upon night-flying or cre- 

 puscular insects, being especially fond of mosquitoes, 

 according to M. Jules Verreaux. During the day it 

 dwells in the spouts or hollow branches of the trees, 

 and when disturbed in its retreat, makes a hissing 

 noise like the owl, which it also resembles very closely 

 in its carriage. When the trunk of the tree on which 

 it has taken up its abode is tapped with a stone, the 

 little inmate will ascend in his spout and peep out to 

 see whether he is threatened with any danger. If the 

 tree be lofty, he again descends in his dwelling ; but if 

 the noise be repeated, or the disturbance about the 

 tree continue, he flies off to another tree which offers 

 a similar refuge. It is in these cavities, without 

 making any nest, that the female deposits her eggs and 

 brings up her young. The eggs are four or five in 

 number ; and Mr. Gould states that at least two broods 

 are reared by each pair of birds in the year. 



THE TAWNY-SHOULDERED PODARGUS (Podargits 

 humeralis). The Podargi, which are peculiar to Aus- 

 tralia and New Guinea, in which countries about eight 

 species have been discovered, are amongst the largest 

 species of this family, and distinguished from the pre- 

 ceding species by a much greater strength of bill. The 

 head is of large size, and the gape enormously wide ; 

 the feet are stout, and the outer toe has a certain power 

 of being reversed. The Tawny-shouldered Podargus, 



