180 
THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
orange-red bill and feet. These teal had not, 
I think, begun to lay : at any rate the duck had 
not begun to sit, for she and the drake were 
always about all day together. We shot a good 
many; they were very easy to get. 
The open part of the Chaco, the campo, 
swarms with small birds. Every reed-bed is 
full of them, chattering and twittering and 
flicking lightly from stem to stem. Very few 
was I able to identify. In the first place, I was 
desperately keen to get something with the rifle, 
and every available minute was spent at that. 
But also, if you are to identify small birds you 
must, unless they are conspicuous or brightly 
coloured, shoot them; and that, as I was not 
collecting, was a senseless slaughter. Big birds 
and middle-sized ones you can identify, with 
patience and a pair of glasses; but small ones 
you cannot, unless your time is unlimited. 
Accordingly my list is shockingly meagre. The 
common marsh birds were there. There was 
the well-known mottled yellow and black one, 
the size of our blackbird, the Yellow-Shouldered 
Marsh-Bird, with its nest attached to reeds 
growing in the water, and its brown spotted 
eggs, and the Red-Breasted Marsh-Bird also. 
More lovely and less common was the Yellow- 
Headed Marsh-Bird, like a Golden Oriole as 
Mr. Hudson truly says, with its jet black and 
clear gold. Then there was the Red-Billed 
Ground-Finch; and that beautiful nest builder. 
