THE BIRDS. 
181 
the Hang-Nest (though this is a bird of the 
monte, not of the campo) who weaves together a 
long pocket, like a string bag, and hangs it 
from a bough. 
This is a most meagre result. Let it be 
remembered that I had no one who knew the 
small birds well and could point them out and 
give one a start. It had been different in 
Uruguay, where in a day or two I had been 
taught the common birds. I knew the impudent 
Bienteveo, looking at you with his head cocked 
on one side, like our jay : the efficient, noisy 
Oven Bird, building his solid mud cupola : the 
Cardinal, with his grey soutane and brilliant 
crimson cap : the little Fire King, flicking on 
and off a bough like our flycatcher, his scarlet 
head glowing like a coal: the Widow Bird, her 
white wedding dress edged with narrow black 
mourning : the Seissor-Tail, on a windy day, 
wondering why nature gave him so inconvenient 
an appendage : the Pigmy Dove, no bigger than 
a thrush, building her little nest of twigs in an 
orange tree : the Lenatero, the Stick Bird, who 
tries to see how big a nest he can make, how 
conspicuous and in how small a tree : all these 
and many more I knew. But none of these were 
here. I was in foreign parts, where the 
appearance, the manners and the language of 
the inhabitants were all new to me. 
The big birds were easier, particularly the 
birds of prey, for these are much the same all 
