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wi.vj voi^e o_ P. cuneacus is the one that will stick in ail our 
minds as the oddest and constant bird note of the island. All night a 
dozen are yowling and moaning at once about your feet wherever you go, and 
eVu.. 'Oj‘ day the low moans come up from the nether regions of the burrows 
or break into the wild climax that accompanies a fight. . It starts as a low 
m-w-an , as everyone else has called it, that to me seems from the first more 
cat-like than human more of a potential yowl than a moan. There is a 
crescendo and climax even in this low conversational stuff followed often 
oy a change of timbre, as tho the last of the wail was an inhalation. This 
as I say is a continuous chorus from a full 100,000 throats all night. Of 
these a dozen will be near enough to definitely obtrude themselves upon 
your consciousness until one grows accustomed to it all. In the distance 
where the quality is softened it keeps reminding me of the chorus from a 
pigeon cote. But when 2 dtf (assumption) take a fancy to the same burrow or 
? the notes rise into a pandemonium of cat-calls, screeches & yowls that no 
one could grow accustomed to any more than to a caterwalling party on the 
back fence when one wants to sleep. In fact the sound of these rough & 
tumble fights so exactly resembles a cat fracas as to be laughable. The 
ensemble emitted by a mating party of about 9 erotic cats exactly describes 
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the racket. These rough & tumble fights are very real affairs. They occur 
mostly at night yet no day goes by with out my seeing at least one. They 
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roll over 1 over with first' one and then another on' top and with bills 
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grabbing like bull dogs at wings legs feet or necks. I can imagine serious 
I 
injury sometimes resulting. It would be a scream in the movies, but tho they 
/sometimes last for some minutes they are usually over in a few -seconds and, 
as I say, are mostly at night or before I could set up the movie. Last night 
they undertook to undermine one corner of my rent and evidently there was "a 
triangle", for every 5 : it seemed they would knock off work and screech their 
