22 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



cate, scented flowers of small mimosas. Curious flycatchers of many 

 species, ranging from those half the size of a chickadee to the robust 

 Derby flycatcher as large as a robin, frequented the open forest or 

 its brushy borders. Small pigeons flew up on every hand as I traveled 

 the cattle trails, and occasionally I came across long-billed jacamars 

 or stolid puff-birds resting quietly on open limbs. 



Excursions in the hilly country toward the base of the mountains 

 took me into more humid sections with dense, green plant growth in 

 whose somber shades lived short-tailed woodland wrens, brown wood- 

 hewers — perching birds with stiffened tail-feathers that climb on trees 

 like woodpeckers — hummingbirds, tanagers, brilliant manakins with 

 black breasts, red crowns, and light blue backs, and many other 

 interesting birds. 



The lagoon was always attractive, with its groups of long-toed 

 jaganas that walked about on the grassy banks like chickens, its tiny 

 grebes that floated on its surface, and its herons and egrets that waded 

 in its shallows. Red-breasted vermilion flycatchers frequented trees 

 on its borders, and white-breasted marsh flycatchers (Fluvicola pica) 

 hawked like swallows over its surface. 



While the native birds were always strange and curious I found 

 equal interest in the many migrants from North America that dur- 

 ing the latter part of October were arriving daily from their long 

 flight across the Caribbean sea for a winter in the Tropics. Barn 

 swallows rested on wires or cruised for insects over the open plain, 

 black-poll warblers, redstarts, and an occasional black-throated blue 

 warbler came into trees near the house or were found in the brush 

 inland, and flocks of pectoral, white-rumped, and Baird's sandpipers, 

 en route from nesting grounds near the Arctic Circle to a winter home 

 in Patagonia, ranged over the muddy shallows of the lagoon. On the 

 lagoon itself were little flocks of blue-winged teal. One morning at 

 dawn while watching through powerful binoculars a long-winged 

 man-o'-war bird far out at sea I saw in the distance beyond it a tiny 

 moving speck driving in from the north toward the land. Gradually 

 this object became larger until finally as it reached the beach and rose 

 a little to pass over it I identified it as a swiftly flying blue-winged 

 teal. I realized then that I was actually observing one of our northern 

 birds as it made a landfall on the Venezuelan coast after its long 

 flight across the ocean. 



The first of November I moved to a country house in the mountains 

 near Rancho Grande at an elevation of 3,200 feet, a short distance 

 below El Portachuelo where the road crosses the pass to descend to 

 the coastal area on the north. The mountain slopes were grown with 



