It Was Smaller Than The Other Lagoons I Have Described And Much
Shallower, So That The Big Birds, Such As The Stork, Wood-Ibis,
Crested Screamer, And The Great Blue Ibis, Called _Vanduria,_ And The
Roseate Spoonbill, Could Wade Almost All Over It Without Wetting Their
Feathers.
It was one of those lakes which appear to be drying up, and
was pretty well covered with a growth of _camalote_ plant, mixed with
reed, sedge, and bulrush patches.
It was the only water in our part of
the country where the large water-snail was found, and the snails had
brought the bird that feeds on them - the large social marsh hawk, a
slate-coloured bird resembling a buzzard in its size and manner of
flight. But being exclusively a feeder on snails, it lives in peace
and harmony with the other bird inhabitants of the marsh. There was
always a colony of forty or fifty of these big hawks to be seen at
this spot. A still more interesting bird was the jacana, as it is
spelt in books, but pronounced ya-sa-NA by the Indians of Paraguay, a
quaint rail-like bird supposed to be related to the plover family:
black and maroon-red in colour, the wing-quills a shining greenish
yellow, it has enormously long toes, spurs on its wings, and yellow
wattles on its face. Here I first saw this strange beautiful fowl, and
here to my delight I found its nest in three consecutive summers, with
three or four clay-coloured eggs spotted with chestnut-red.
Here, too, was the breeding-place of the beautiful black-and-white
stilt, and of other species too many to mention. But my greatest
delight was in finding breeding in this place a bird I loved more than
all the others I have named - a species of marsh trupial, a bird about
the size of the common cowbird, and like it, of a uniform deep purple,
but with a cap of chestnut-coloured feathers on its head. I loved this
bird for its song - the peculiar delicate tender opening notes and
trills. In spring and autumn large flocks would occasionally visit our
plantation, and the birds in hundreds would settle on a tree and all
sing together, producing a marvellous and beautiful noise, as of
hundreds of small bells all ringing at one time. It was by the water I
first found their breeding-place, where about three or four hundred
birds had their nests quite near together, and nests and eggs and the
plants on which they were placed, with the solicitous purple birds
flying round me, made a scene of enchanting beauty. The nesting-site
was on a low swampy piece of ground grown over with a semi-aquatic
plant called _durasmillo_ in the vernacular. It has a single white
stalk, woody in appearance, two to three feet high, and little
thicker than a man's middle finger, with a palm-like crown of large
loose lanceolate leaves, so that it looks like a miniature palm, or
rather an ailanthus tree, which has a slender perfectly white bole.
The solanaceous flowers are purple, and it bears fruit the size of
cherries, black as jet, in clusters of three to five or six.
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