Through the Hradlia)( IVildcr.icss. 
201 
ranch-house. The birds were breedint^; the old ones feeding 
the young. In the neighbourhood the naturahsts found many 
birds that were new to them, including a tiny woodpecker no 
bigger than a Ruby-crowned Kinglet .... At night we 
heard the calling of large flights of Tree-Ducks. These were 
now the most common of all the ducks, although there were 
many Muscovy Ducks also. 
" By the morning of January 5th we had left the marsh 
region .... The bird-life was wonderful. One of the 
characteristic sights we were always seeing was that of a number 
of heads and necks of Cormorants and Snake-birds, without any 
bodies projecting above water, and disappearing as the 
steamer approached. Skimmers and Thick-billed Tern were 
plentiful here right in the heart of the continent. In addition 
Spurred Lapwing, a characteristic and most interesting resident 
of South America ; we found tiny Red-legged Plover, which 
also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in 
habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the 
plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year 
round in almost the same places in tropical and sub-tropical 
lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole 
earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic 
and cold temperal regions of the far north, now in the cold 
temperate regions of the south. These latter wide-wandering 
birds of the sea-shore and the river-bank pass most of 
their lives in regions of almost perpetual sunlight. They 
spend the breeding season, the northern summer, in the 
land of the midnight sim, during the long arctic day. They 
then fly for endless distances down across the north temperate 
zone, across the equator, through the lands where the days and 
nights are always of equal length, into another hemisphere, and 
spend another summer of long days and long twilights in the 
far south, where the antarctic winds cool them, while their 
nesting home, at the other end of the world, is shrouded beneath 
the iron desolation of the polar night. 
" After leaving Caceres we went up the Sepotuba, which 
in the local Indian dialect means River of Tapirs .... 
Many birds were around us; I saw some of them and Cherrie 
