246 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



dirty yellow white. The feathers round the eyes are 

 of the same dark brown as the rest of the body ; and 

 then conies a circle of white, which has mnch the 

 appearance of the rim of a large pair of spectacles. I 

 strongly suspect that the dirty yellow white of the 

 belly and thighs has originally been pnre white ; and 

 that it has come to its present colour by means of the 

 bird darting down upon its prey in the mud. But this 

 is mere conjecture. 



Here too, close to the river, I frequently 



saw the bird called Sun-bird by the English 

 colonists, and Tirana by the Spaniards in the Oroonoque. 

 It is very elegant ; and in its outward appearance ap- 

 proaches near to the heron tribe ; still it does not live 

 upon fish. Flies and insects are its food ; and it takes 

 them just as the heron takes fish, by approaching near 

 and then striking with its beak at its prey, so quick, 

 that it has no chance to escape. The beautiful mixture 

 of grey, yellow, green, black, white, and chestnut in 

 the plumage of this bird, baffles any attempt to give a 

 description of the distribution of them which would be 

 satisfactory to the reader. 



There is something remarkable in the 

 TinamoS^^* great Tinamou, which I suspect has hitherto 



escaped notice. It invariably roosts in trees ; 

 but the feet are so very small in proportion to the body 

 of this bulky bird, that they can be of no use to it in 

 grasping the branch ; and, moreover, the hind toe is so 

 short, that it does not touch the ground when the bird 

 is walking. The back part of the leg, just below the 

 knee, is quite flat, and somewhat concave. On it are 

 strong pointed scales, w^hich are very rough, and catch 

 your finger as you move it along from the knee to the 



