CHAPTER X. 



BIRD MUSIC IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



SUMMER, winter and spring, it was an unfailing 

 pleasure in Patagonia to listen to the singing of the 

 birds. They were most abundant where the culti- 

 vated valley with its groves and orchards was 

 narrowest, and the thorny wilderness of the upland 

 close at hand ; just as in England small birds 

 abound most where plantations of fruit trees exist 

 side by side with or near to extensive woods and 

 commons. In the first there is an unfailing supply 

 of insect food, the second affords them the wild 

 cover they prefer, and they pass frequently from 

 one to the other. At a distance from the river 

 birds were not nearly so abundant, and in the 

 higher uplands a hundred miles from the coast 

 they were very scarce. 



When the idle fit was on me it was my custom 

 to ramble in the bushy lands away from the river, 

 especially during the warm spring weather, when 

 there were some fresh voices to be heard of 

 migrants newly arrived from the tropics, and the 

 songs of the resident species had acquired a greater 

 vigour and beauty. It was a pleasure simply to 

 wander on and on for hours, moving cautiously 



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