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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 40 of 114
Words from 20502 to 21014
of 59060
