ABUNDANT BIRD LIFE 173 



tains, forests or barren places in that region; it 

 was all grass and herbage, the cardoon and giant 

 thistles predominating; also there were marshes 

 everywhere, with shallow water and endless beds of 

 reeds, sedges and bulrushes — a paradise of all 

 aquatic fowl. Thus, besides the numerous shore 

 birds, the herons of seven species, the crested 

 screamer, the courlan, the rails and coots and grebes, 

 the jacana, the two giant ibises — the stork and wood 

 ibis — and the glossy ibis in enormous flocks, we had 

 two swans, upland geese in winter, and over twenty 

 species of duck. Most of these birds were migratory. 



South America can well be called the great bird 

 continent, and I do not believe that any other large 

 area on it so abounded with bird life as this very 

 one where I was born and reared and saw, and heard, 

 so much of birds from my childhood that they be- 

 came to me the most interesting things in the world. 

 Thus, the number of species known to me personally, 

 even as a youth, exceeded that of all the species 

 in the British Islands, including the sea or pelagic 

 species that visit our coasts in summer, to breed 

 and spend the rest of the year on the Mediterranean 

 and Atlantic oceans. 



It was not only the number of species known to 

 me, but rather the incalculable, the incredible num- 

 . bers in which some of the commonest kinds appeared, 

 especially when migrating. For it was not then as, 

 alas! it is now, when all that immense open and 

 practically wild country has been enclosed in wire 

 fences and is now peopled with immigrants from 



