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ABOUT THE JAPU. 
and treeless places. A bird of mercurial temperament, he is always in 
motion ; flying from tree to tree, hanging to a branch by bis strong 
claws, picking a fruit, carrying it away to eat at leisure, and keeping 
up a constant chatter while thus engaged. Berries and insects rank 
high in his bill of fare. When the fruits are ripe, he sweeps down 
in large flocks on the orchard-tracts, pilfering oranges, lemons, and 
bananas, and doing a fair amount of damage. 
He is a very sociable bird. 
In fact, even in the breeding-season these cassiques congregate 
together in couples, — thirty, forty, or more, — and suspend their nests 
from the branches of the same tree. 
" One day," says the Prince de Wied, " at the bottom of a romantic 
valley, finely shaded, and surrounded on all sides by wooded heights, 
I fell in with an exceedingly numerous colony of japus (the Indian 
name for these birds). They so completely filled the forest with life, 
that we could not fix our attention on any particular point. Every 
glade resounded with their cries. 
" Usuallj/ they utter only a brief hoarse call ; occasionally they lift 
up their voice in other sounds — a shrill, laryngeal whistling, not unlike 
the tones of a flute, and ranging over half an octave. Other notes are 
introduced into the strain, with a result which is very curious, but not 
altogether disagreeable. 
"The japu," continues the Prince, "builds his nest on trees of 
greater or less elevation. His nest, purse-shaped, is five or six inches 
in diameter, and frequently three to four in length. It is narrow, 
rounded at the bottom, and attached to a twig or a branch about as 
thick as one's finger." The entrance is on the top. Owing to the 
shape of this nest, and the flexibility of its materials, it becomes the 
plaything of the gentlest breeze. The bird weaves and felts it with 
the fibres of the tillandsia and the greivatha, and makes it into so 
solid a whole that it cannot be pulled to pieces without the greatest 
difficulty. At the bottom of this long purse is deposited a bed of 
moss, dry leaves, and bark ; and on this bed lie one or two violet- 
spotted eggs. 
Frequently one nest is attached to another ; and then the first nest 
