122 THE BOOK OF BIRDS 



chattering of the parrots plainly heard." What a jjano- 

 rama of beauty it must have been ! And the birds, un- 

 startled by any footfall, must have been taken unawares 

 as the cruiser stole silently past their playgrounds. 

 What would not some of us have given to have been on 

 board and seen all those riverside wonders ? 



The Great Green Macaw — who, by the bye, is not all 

 green, for he has scarlet and blue to make him still more 

 gay — often strays away from his forest haunts and helps 

 himself to a change of food among the maize fields. The 

 farmer hates him, and shoots him — when he can ; for his 

 appetite is enormous, and the mischief he can do in a 

 few hours is very serious. 



Like the baboons, he is cute enough to station one ot 

 his clan as sentinel, when he and his fellows are going to 

 raid the cultivated lands. As soon as the alarm is given 

 they rise and with strong wing-beats take flight back to 

 the forest. 



The author of The Naturalist on the Amazons, Henry 

 W. Bates, saw few living things, in the course of his 

 adventurous wanderings, that were more rarely beautiful 

 than the Hyacinthine Macaw. It is only to be found in 

 the wilds of Brazil, far away in the interior. 



It is three feet long from the beak to the tip of the 

 tail, and is entirely, he tells us, "of a soft hyacinthine 

 blue colour," except just round the eyes, which are 

 encircled with a bare white patch. The biting power of 

 the beak must be astonishing. For this Macaw feeds on 

 the hard nuts of certain palms, notably those of the 

 Mucujgl, which are "difficult to break even with a 

 hammer." These digestible trifles, he tells us, are 

 "crushed to a pulp" by the powerful mandibles of the 

 Araruna, as it is called by the natives of those parts. 



