AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 297 



black cloud overhead at short intervals. I watched their flight and 

 listened to their notes, till suddenly, as they made a wide sweep upward, 

 they disappeared in the cloud, and at the same moment their voices be- 

 came muffled, and seemed to come from an immense distance. The 

 cloud continued emitting sharp flashes of lighning, but the birds never 

 reappeared, and after six or seven minutes more, their notes sounded 

 loud and clear above the muttering thunder. I suppose they had passed 

 through the cloud into the clear atmosphere above it, but I was extreme- 

 ly surprised at their fearlessness; for as a rule, when soaring birds see a 

 storm coming, they get out of its way, flying before it or swopping to 

 the earth to seek shelter of some kind, as most living things seem to 

 have a wholesome dread of thunder and lightning." 



A number of South American birds are fond of dancing. The beau- 

 tiful Platan rails called Ypecahas go about the performance in this way. 

 Having prepared a smooth, level spot in the marsh, hemmed in by tall 

 rushes, one bird will issue the invitation to the frolic by a powerful cry 

 repeated three times, which is responded to by his mates from all sides 

 as they hurry to the tryst. In a few moments a dozen or twenty burst 

 from the reeds into the open space, and at once the performance begins. 

 The birds rush around and dance from side to side as if possessed by a 

 spirit of frenzy, their wings spread and vibrating and their long beaks 

 wide open and raised vertically. At the same time they utter a med- 

 ley of unearthly screams, which might well come from an equal num- 

 ber of human beings filled with terror and despair. The exhibition 

 lasts three or four minutes, when the birds scatter again amid the 

 rushes. 



The shows given by the scissor-tailed tyrant-birds take place in the 

 upper air instead of on the ground. Although these birds live in pairs, 

 at sunset several couples will call excitedly to one another, at which 

 they will assemble, and when all are ready, they will "mount upwards 

 like rockets, to a great height in the air, and after wheeling about for a 

 few moments, precipitate themselves downwards with amazing violence 

 in a wild zigzag, opening and shutting the long tail-feathers like a pair 

 of shears, and producing loud whirring sounds, as of clocks being 

 wound rapidly up, with a slight pause after each turn of the key. This 

 aerial dance over, they alight in separate couples on the tree tops, each 

 couple joining in a kind of duet of rapidly repeated, castanet-like sounds." 



It would doubtless be interesting to describe the parties given by the 

 jacanas, the spur-winged lapwings, the wood-hewers, the whistling 

 troupials, the soaring field-finches, and the white-banded mocking-bird 

 of Patagonia, which not only mimics the songs of other birds, but 

 often "bursts into its own divine song, uttered with a power, abandon 



