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and the noise so great that by shouting ever so loud we could

only just hear each others voices. The Canary-coloured wings

are most conspicuous when flying, and such clouds of them

together formed a very fine sight. These birds have great

homing instincts, in fact all birds the Indians keep seem to

possess or acquire this instinct. They keep no birds in cages,

and Toucans, Cassiques, Parrakeets, Parrots, Penelopes, and

other birds I have seen about the Indian habitations with full

liberty, sleeping in the forest trees near the huts at night, and in

and about the huts during the day. When up the Napo, I once

had a pair of the B. virescens brought to me by an Indian who

lived on the opposite bank of the river to us, to see if I would

give him something in exchange for them ; as I was not able to

attend to the matter at the time, he left them in our hut until

the next day, but during that evening they took their departure

back of their own accord, and the river there was quite as wide

as the Thames at London Bridge ; neither was the hut visible

from the opposite bank. I brought a pair of these birds home

alive with me also. I find them as hardy, if not more so, than

the Tins. Their nesting season on the Maranon must have been

in July, for although we never came across their nests ourselves,

we met Indians with numbers of young ones, so I procured a

pair from them and brought mine up by hand.


Although I have nothing of importance to chronicle about

the Red-vented Parrots, I may just remark that they were also

exceedingly common on certain parts of the Napo. All those I

came across in the possession of the Indians, although ex¬

ceedingly tame, seemed uninteresting and rather stupid birds.


We did not trouble much to look out for live birds until

we got down to the Amazon, as we expected to find there all we

cared to bring home with us, but in this we w T ere grievously

disappointed. I searched everywhere, in village after village

where we stopped, and lower down in towns also, but could

never meet with anything beyond the most ordinary Amazon

Parrots, which of course we did not want. Where the Brazilians

cared for birds at all, it was their ambition to possess a Canary

for which they would pay extravagant prices. It is no exagger¬

ation to say, that apart from Amazon Parrots, more Brazilian

birds are to be found in a dealer’s shop at home than we met

with in captivity in the whole of the Amazon valley, and the city

of Para included. I thought when we got down to this last port

we could not fail to find some large bird dealers ; but after

enquiring everywhere, I at last unearthed one, known among



