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.
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