Idle Days. 137 
foliage of the tree and shrub vegetation covering 
the country. 
As spring advances each day dawns apparently 
more brilliantly beautiful than the preceding one, 
and after breakfast I roam forth, unencumbered 
with gun, in search of recreation. 
Hard by my residence there is a hill called the 
“ Parrots’ Cliff,’ where the swift current of the 
river, altering its course, has eaten into the shore 
till a sheer smooth precipice over a hundred feet 
high has been formed. In ancient times the summit 
must have been the site of an Indian village, for I 
am continually picking up arrow-heads here; at 
present the face of the cliff is inhabited by a flock 
of screaming Patagonian parrots, that have their 
ancestral breeding-holes in the soft rock. It is also 
haunted by a flock of pigeons that have taken to a 
feral life, by one pair of little hawks (Falco spar- 
verius), and a colony of purple martins; only these 
last have not yet returned from their equatorial 
wanderings. Quiet reigns along the precipice when 
I reach it, for the vociferous parrots are away 
feeding. I lie down on my breast and peer over 
the edge; far, far beneath me a number of coots 
are peacefully disporting themselves in the water. 
I take a stone the bigness of my hand, and, poising 
it over the perilous rim, drop it upon them: down, 
down, down it drops; oh, simple, unsuspecting 
coots, beware! Splash it falls in the middle of the 
flock, sending up a column of water ten feet high, 
and then what a panic seizes on the birds! They 
