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forests on the eastern side, until we reached the head waters of

the Amazon. After staying for months among the wild Indian

tribes there, we descended the Napo in dugouts, and so reached

the Maranon, where we took boats for the remaining 4,000 miles

down to Para, having thus crossed the entire Continent.


It is from notes and observations made on this journey,

a journey made solely for the purpose of taking toll from the

feathered inhabitants of the country, that I shall endeavour to

write a few articles which I trust may prove of interest to some

members of the Avicultural Society.


There are many things connected with bird life in the

tropics that would surprise some of our aviculturists at home. For

instance, who would not, in his mind’s eye, associate Humming¬

birds, nature’s living jewels, with sunny flower-bedecked glades?

It is true that numbers of them are found (and some beautiful

ones, too) in the hot forests of tropical America, but they are

much more numerous, and far more beautiful in the higher

Andes ; some of the loveliest of all being found at altitudes of

between eight and thirteen thousand feet, whilst the little Black

Hummer with a sapphire throat, known as Jameson’s Humming¬

bird, I have seen, when camping out on the volcano of Pichincha,

Condor shooting, flying past our tent in a heavy snow storm,

with its mournful twit , twit , at an altitude of over 14,000 ft. I

have noticed others of the same family sitting on the telegraph

wires (apparently a favourite post of theirs) along the dusty

roads in the central highlands, in the most prosaic manner

possible, watching, perchance, for passing insects, darting into

the air to seize their prey on the wing, and always returning to

the same spot. It seems to be almost a general rule in Ecuador,

that Humming-birds which make their home in the dense forests,

lack almost entirely the beautiful iridescence peculiar to most

members of the family. But it they lack colour, many of them

have peculiarities of form, as for instance, the wonderful curved

bill of the Eutoxeres aqitila, the saw bill of the Androdon equa-

torialis, and the elongated tail-feathers of Pheethomis syrmato-

phorus. In showing Humming-birds’ skins to friends at home,

one always hears the remark, “ How lovely they must look flying

about 1 ” It is true they do look pretty with their graceful poses,

but their wonderful colouring is generally then almost entirely

invisible, and certainly not seen to proper advantage, many

species looking much the same as one another in freedom, but

vastly different when held in the hand and turned to the right

light. But however fascinating these birds are, I must leave



