ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

 BULLETIN 



Published by the New York Zoological Society 



Vol. XIX 



SEPTEMBER, 1916 



Number 5 



NESTLING HOATZINS AT HOME 



By William Beebe. 

 Illustrated by the Author and Paul G. Howes. 



THE flight of the hoatzin resembles that of 

 an over-fed hen. The hoatzin's voice is 

 no more melodious than the crj^ of a pea- 

 cock, but less sonorous than an alligator's roar. 

 The bird's grace is batrachian rather than avi- 

 an, while the odor of its body resembles that of 

 no bird untouched by dissolution. Still, zoo- 

 logically considered, the hoatzin is probably the 

 most remarkable and interesting bird living on 

 the earth today. 



It has successfully defied time and space. For 

 it, the dial of the ages has moved more slowly 

 than for the rest of organic life, and although 

 living and breathing with us today, yet its world 

 is an affair of two dimensions — a line of thorny 

 saplings threaded along the muddy banks of a 

 few tropical waters. 



A bird in a cage cannot escape, and may be 

 found month after month wherever the cage is 

 placed. A stuffed bird in a case may resist 

 dissolution for a century. But when we go to 

 look for the bluebirds which nest in the or- 

 chard, they may have flown a half mile awav 

 in their search for food. The plover which 

 scurries before us today on the beach may to- 

 night be far away on the first lap of his seven 

 thousand mile flight to the southward. 



The hoatzin's status lies rather with the 

 caged bird. In November in New York City 

 an Englishman from British Guiana said to me,, 

 "Go to the Berbice River, and at the north end 

 of the town of New Amsterdam, in front of Mr. 

 Beckett's house, vou will find hoatzins." Six 



months later as I drove along a tropical river 

 road I saw three hoatzins perched on a low 

 thorn bush at the river's edge in front of a 

 house. And the river was the Berbice, and the 

 house that of Mr. Beckett. 



Thus are the hoatzins independent of space, 

 as all other flying birds know it, and in their 

 classic reptilian affinities, — voice, actions, arms, 

 fingers, habits, — they bring close the dim epochs 

 of past time, and renew for our inspection the 

 youth of bird life on the earth. It is discour- 

 aging even to attempt to translate habits fraught 

 with so profound a significance into words, or 

 to make them realistic even with the aid of 

 photographs. 



We took a boat opposite Mr. Beckett's house, 

 and paddled slowly with the nearly-flood tide 

 up the Berbice River. It was two o'clock, the 

 hottest time of the day. For three miles we 

 drifted past the chosen haunts of the hoatzins. 

 All were perched in the shade, quiet in the vio- 

 lent heat, squatting prostrate or sleepily preen- 

 ing their jjlumage. Now and then we saw a 

 bird on her nest, alwaj^s over the water. If 

 she was sitting on eggs she sat close. If young 

 birds were in the nest she half-crouched, or 

 perched on the rim, so that her bodv cast a 

 shadow over the young. 



The vegetation was not varied. Mucka- 

 mucka was here and there in the foreground, 

 with an almost solid line of bunduri pimpler or 

 thorn tree (Drepanocarpus lunatus). This was 

 the real home of the birds, and this plant forms 



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