A'^otes (Did Observations on a Guan. 289 



and vineSj &:c., about six feet or more from the ground, never 

 actually thereon. All my informants were agreed upon this 

 point. It is built of twigs, small sticks^ grasses, &c., and 

 is never a mound of dead leaves suggesting a megapode. 

 The young, hatched out by domestic fowls, are said to 

 behave very much like young game-birds until about 14 (?) 

 days old, when they will enter trees or bushes or even climb 

 on to the roof of a low building. In the wild state they are 

 said to leave the nest almost at once. Two eggs appear to 

 be the usual number laid." 



Arboreal habits of the Giians. 



As regards the almost entii'ely arboreal existence led by 

 the old birds, every writer who has had anything to say on 

 the habits of the bird emphasizes this point. 



I have myself often observed the Guan in Mexico and 

 Venezuela, and I cannot rememljer ever having seen one on 

 the ground, although I have seen and heard a great number 

 in their natural habitat among low trees and dense scrub. 

 There is, however, I believe, no doubt that they do some- 

 times descend to the ground. 



Mr. Graham Kerr (' Ibis,' 1892, p. 148), speakmg of 

 O. canicollis, says, for instance, "They occasionally descend 

 to the ground to feed ; but this is comparatively rare.'' 



Guans are indeed, as a matter of fact, timid and sociable 

 birds, which live in small parties below the dense umbra- 

 geous foliage of thick and tall bushes or low trees. In 

 Venezuela (0. ruficauda) I have met with them in low-lying 

 country covered with dense scrub, or in the thick bush 

 surrounding occasional clearings in the dark and solemn 

 forest. 



On the eastern coast of Mexico, where Ortalis vetula 

 occurs, I have seen them in dense scrub, where it was very 

 difficult to track them down ; or, again, flying across the 

 backwaters of rivers (with much the same feeble and 

 ineffective flight as is described as characteristic of the 

 Hoatziii) from one dense mangrove or other variety of 



