At all events on the last day of my vain efforts to
procure golden plover, a big, bearded gaucho,
With hat stuck on the
back of his head, rode forth from the house on a large horse, and was
passing at a distance of about fifty yards when he all at once
stopped, and turning came at a gallop to within a few feet of me and
shouted in a loud voice: "Why do you come here, English boy,
frightening and chasing away God's little birds? Don't you know that
they do no harm to any one, and it is wrong to hurt them?" And with
that he galloped off.
I was angry at being rebuked by an ignorant ruffianly gaucho, who like
most of his kind would tell lies, gamble, cheat, fight, steal, and do
other naughty things without a qualm. Besides, it struck me as funny
to hear the golden plover, which I wanted for the table, called "God's
little birds," just as if they were wrens or swallows or humming-
birds, or the darling little many-coloured kinglet of the bulrush
beds. But I was ashamed, too, and gave up the chase.
The nearest of the moist green low-lying spots I have described as
lying south of us, between our house and Canada Seca, was not more
than twenty minutes' walk from the gate. It was a flat, oval-shaped
area of about fifty acres, and kept its vivid green colour and
freshness when in January the surrounding land was all of a rusty
brown colour. It was to us a delightful spot to run about and play on,
and though the golden plover did not come there it was haunted during
the summer by small flocks of the pretty buff-coloured sandpiper, a
sandpiper with the habits of a plover, one, too, which breeds in the
arctic regions and spends half the year in southern South America.
This green area would become flooded after heavy rains. It was then
like a vast lake to us, although the water was not more than about
three feet deep, and at such times it was infested with the big
venomous toad-like creature called _escuerzo_ in the vernacular, which
simply means toad, but naturalists have placed it in quite a different
family of the batrachians and call it _Ceratophrys ornata_ It is toad-
like in form but more lumpish, with a bigger head; it is big as a
man's fist, of a vivid green with black symmetrical markings on its
back, and primrose-yellow beneath. A dreadful looking creature, a toad
that preys on the real or common toads, swallowing them alive just as
the hamadryad swallows other serpents, venomous or not, and as the
Cribo of Martinique, a big non-venomous serpent, kills and swallows
the deadly fer-de-lance.
In summer we had no fear of this creature, as it buries itself in the
soil and aestivates during the hot, dry season, and comes forth in wet
weather.
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