Idle Days. 137 



foliage of the tree and shrub vegetation covering 

 the country. 



As spring advances each day dawns apparently 

 more brilliantly beautiful than the preceding one, 

 and after breakfast I roam forth, unencumbered 

 with gun, in search of recreation. 



Hard by my residence there is a hill called the 

 " Parrots' Cliff," where the swift current of the 

 river, altering its course, has eaten into the shore 

 till a sheer smooth precipice over a hundred feet 

 high has been formed. In ancient times the summit 

 must have been the site of an Indian village, for I 

 am continually picking up arrow-heads here ; at 

 present the face of the cliff is inhabited by a flock 

 of screaming Patagonian parrots, that have their 

 ancestral breeding-holes in the soft rock. It is also 

 haunted by a flock of pigeons that have taken to. a 

 feral life, by one pair of little hawks (Falco spar- 

 verius), and a colony of purple martins ; only these 

 last have not yet returned from their equatorial 

 wanderings. Quiet reigns along the precipice when 

 I reach it, for the vociferous parrots are away 

 feeding. I lie down on my breast and peer over 

 the edge ; far, far beneath me a number of coots 

 are peacefully disporting themselves in the water. 

 I take a stone the bigness of my hand, and, poising 

 it over the perilous rim, drop it upon them : down, 

 down, down it drops; oh, simple, unsuspecting 

 coots, beware ! Splash it falls in the middle of the 

 flock, sending up a column of water ten feet high, 

 and then what a panic seizes on the birds ! They 



