Far Away And Long Ago A History Of My Early Life By W. H. Hudson








































































 -  It had then occurred to me that I
had heard a peculiar note or cry uttered by what I took - Page 146
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It Had Then Occurred To Me That I Had Heard A Peculiar Note Or Cry Uttered By What I Took

To be the cowbird, which was unlike any note of that bird; and following this clue, I had discovered that

We had a bird in our plantation which was like the cowbird in size, colour, and general appearance, but was a different species. They appeared amused by my story, and a few days later they closely interrogated me on three consecutive evenings as to what I had seen that was remarkable that day, in birds especially, and were disappointed because I had nothing interesting to tell them.

The next day my brother said he had a confession to make to me. He and the elder brother had agreed to play a practical joke on me, and had snared a common cowbird and dyed or painted its tail a brilliant scarlet, then liberated it, expecting that I should meet with it in my day's rambles and bird-watching in the plantation and would be greatly excited at the discovery of yet a third purple cowbird, with a scarlet tail, but otherwise not distinguishable from the common one. Now, on reflection, he was glad I had not found their bird and given them their laugh, and he was ashamed at having tried to play such a mean trick on me!

CHAPTER XX

BIRDING IN THE MARSHES

Visiting the marshes - Pajonales and Juncales - Abundant bird life - A Coots' metropolis - Frightening the Coots - Grebe and Painted Snipe colonies - The haunt of the Social Marsh Hawk - The beautiful Jacana and its eggs - The colony of Marsh Trupials - The bird's music - The aquatic plant Durasmillo - The Trupial's nest and eggs - Recalling a beauty that has vanished - Our games with gaucho boys - I am injured by a bad boy - The shepherd's advice - Getting my revenge in a treacherous manner - Was it right or wrong? - The game of Hunting the Ostrich.

At this time of my boy-life most of the daylight hours were spent out of doors, as when not watching the birds in our plantation or asked to go and look at the flock grazing somewhere a mile or so from home, in the absence of the shepherd or his boy, I was always away somewhere on the plain with my small brother on egg-hunting or other expeditions. In the spring and summer we often visited the lagoons or marshes, the most fascinating places I knew on account of their abundant wild bird life. There were four of these lagoons, all in different directions and all within two or three miles from home. They were shallow lakelets, called _lagunas,_ each occupying an area of three or four hundred acres, with some open water and the rest overgrown with bright green sedges in dense beds, called _pajonales,_ and immense beds of bulrushes, called _juncales._ These last were always the best to explore when the water was not deeper than the saddle-girth, and where the round dark polished stems, crowned with their bright brown tufts, were higher than our heads when we urged our horses through them. These were the breeding-places of some small birds that had their beautifully-made nests a couple of feet or so above the water, attached in some cases to single, in others to two or three, rush stems.

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