110 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH xUIERICA. 



and shaking his lowered wings, he produces notes 

 which though they cannot be said to amount to a song, 

 still have something very sweet and pleasing in them. 

 He makes his nest in the same form as the other 

 cassiques. It is above four feet long ; and when you 

 pass under the tree, which often contains fifty or sixty 

 of them, you cannot help stopping to admire them as 

 they wave to and fro, the sport of every storm and 

 breeze. The rump is chestnut ; ten feathers of the 

 tail are a line yellow, the remaining two, which are the 

 middle ones, are black, and an inch shorter than the 

 others. His bill is sulphur colour ; all the rest of the 

 body black, with here and there shades of brown. He 

 has five or six long narrow black feathers on the back 

 of his head, which he erects at pleasure. 



There is one more species of cassique in Demerara, 

 which always prefers the forests to the cultivated parts. 

 His economy is the same as that of the other cassiques. 

 He is rather smaller than the last described bird. His 

 body is greenish, and his tail and rump paler than those 

 of the former. Half of his beak is red. 



You w^ould not be long in the forests of 

 peckers^' Demerara, without noticing the woodpeckers. 



You meet with them feeding at all hours of 

 the day. Well may they do so. Were they to follow 

 the example of most of the other birds, and only feed 

 in the morning and evening, they would be often on 

 short allowance, for they sometimes have to labour 

 three or four hours at the tree before they get to their 

 food. The sound which the largest kind makes in 

 hammering against the bark of the tree, is so loud, that 

 you would never suppose it to proceed from the efforts 

 of a bird. You would take it to be the woodman, with 



