Birds Were Fairly Plentiful In These Mountain Forests, And I Was Glad To Get One Of The Interesting Racquet-Tailed Parrots Of The Genus PRIONITURUS, That Are Only Found In The Philippines And Celebes.

It was curious that up here amongst the pigmy Negritos I should get a pigmy hawk.

It was by far the smallest hawk I had ever seen, being not much larger than a sparrow. Several species of very beautiful honey-suckers, full of metallic colours, used to frequent the bright red flowers of a creeper that generally clambered up the trees overhanging the streams, and these flowers proved very popular with many butterflies, especially the giant gold and black ORNITHOPTERAS and various rare PAPILIOS of great beauty. There was one bird I was most anxious to get, and though I saw it once I had to leave Luzon without it. It was a PITTA, a kind of ground thrush. Thrushes of this genus are amongst the most brilliant of all birds, and in my own collections I possess a great number of different species that I have collected in other countries. This one that I was so anxious to get was locally called "Tinkalu." Amongst both Filipinos and Negritos it has the reputation of being the cleverest of all birds, and, as Vic expressed it, "like a man." It hops away into the thickest undergrowth and hides at the least sound. Certainly no bird has ever given me such a lot of worry and trouble. Many a weary hour did I spend going through swamps and rivers, bamboo and thorny palms, dripping with perspiration and tormented by swarms of mosquitos and sand-flies, and all to no purpose!

Thanks to Vic, I soon picked up most of the local names of the various birds, which were often given on account of the sounds they made. The large hornbill was named "Gasalo," the smaller kind "Talactic," the large pigeon "Buabu," a bee-eater Patirictiric," and other names were "Pipit," "Culiaun," "Alibasbas," "Quilaquilbunduc," "Papalacul," "Batala," "Batubatu," "Culasisi." Some of the spiders here were of great size, and in these mountain forests their webs were a great nuisance. These webs were often of a yellow glutinous substance, which stained my clothes, and when they caught me in the face, as they often did, it was the reverse of pleasant.

Mosquitos and sandflies were very numerous and ants were in great force, so that one evening when I discovered that they were hard at work amongst all my bird skins, it took me up to 5 a.m. to separate them before I could get to bed.

I discovered a diurnal moth that possessed a most powerful and delicious scent. Vic, who had never noticed it before, was delighted, and proposed my catching them in quantities and turning them into scent. Whilst on the subject of scent, I might mention that in these forests I would often come across a good-sized tree which was called Ilang-ilang. It was covered with plain-looking green flowers, which possessed a wonderful fragrance. I learnt that the Filipinos collected the flowers, which were sent to Manila and made into scent, but that they generally cut down the tree in order to get the flowers.

I saw here for the first time the curious flying lizards. Their partly transparent wings were generally of very bright colours; they fly fully twenty yards from one tree to another, and quickly run up the trees out of reach. Another quaint lizard, was what is generally known as the gecko. It is said to be poisonous in the Philippines, and is generally found on trees or bamboos and often in houses. In comparison to the size of this lizard the volume of its voice was enormous. I generally heard it at night. First would come a preliminary gurgling chuckle; then a pause (between the chuckle and what follows it). Then comes loud and clear, "Tuck-oo-o," then a slight pause, then "Tuck-oo-o" again repeated six or seven times at regular intervals; at other times it sounds like "Chuck it." When it was calling inside a hollow bamboo, the noise made was extraordinary. There were a great number of bamboos in the surrounding country, and they were continually snapping with loud reports, which I would often imagine to be the reports of a rifle until I got used to them. Wild pig were very plentiful, and at night they would often grub up the ground a few yards from my hut. One night I was skinning a bird, with Vic looking on, when we heard some animal growling close by, and Vic without any warning seized my gun (which I always kept loaded with buckshot) and fired into the darkness. He said that it was a "tigre," and called out excitedly that he had killed it, but although we hunted about with a light for some time, we saw no signs of it. No doubt it was some animal of the cat family. Vic, as in fact all Filipinos, had a mortal dread of snakes, and he would never venture out at night without a torch made of lighted bamboo, as he said they were very plentiful at night. The large hornbills ("Gasalo") were very hard to stalk, and as they generally frequented the tallest trees they were out of shot. They usually flew about in flocks, and made a most extraordinary noise, rather like a whole farmyard full of turkeys, guinea fowls and dogs. The whirring noise they made with their wings was not unlike the shunting of a locomotive. I had often before heard of the curious habit of the male in plastering up the female with mud in the hollow of a tree, leaving only a small hole through which he fed her until the single egg was hatched and the young one was ready to fly. Vic knew this, and further informed me that the smaller species, named here "Talactic," had the same custom of plastering up the female.

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