CHAPTER X. 
BIRD MUSIC IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
Sommer, winter and spring, it was an unfailing 
pleasure in Patagonia to listen to the singing of the 
birds. They were most abundant where the culti- 
vated valley with its groves and orchards was 
narrowest, and the thorny wilderness of the upland 
close at hand; just as in England small birds 
abound most where plantations of fruit trees exist 
side by side with or near to extensive woods and 
commons. In the first there is an unfailing supply 
of insect food, the second affords them the wild 
cover they prefer, and they pass frequently from 
one to the other. At a distance from the river 
birds were not nearly so abundant, and in the 
higher uplands a hundred miles from the coast 
they were very scarce. 
When the idle fit was on me it was my custom 
to ramble in the bushy lands away from the river, 
especially during the warm spring weather, when 
there were some fresh voices to be heard of 
migrants newly arrived from the tropics, and the 
songs of the resident species had acquired a greater 
vigour and beauty. It was a pleasure simply to 
wander on and on for hours, moving cautiously 
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