It grows
to a great size, like the black poplar, but has long narrow leaves
like those of the weeping willow. In summer I was never tired of
watching this tree, since high up in one of the branches, which in
those days seemed to me "so close against the sky," a scissor-tail
tyrant-bird always had its nest, and this high open exposed nest was a
constant attraction to the common brown carrion-hawk, called
_chimango_--a hawk with the carrion-crow's habit of perpetually
loitering about in search of eggs and fledglings.
The scissor-tail is one of the most courageous of that hawk-hating,
violent-tempered tyrant-bird family, and every time a _chimango_
appeared, which was about forty times a day, he would sally out to
attack him in mid-air with amazing fury. The marauder driven off, he
would return to the tree to utter his triumphant rattling castanet-
like notes and (no doubt) to receive the congratulations of his mate;
then to settle down again to watch the sky for the appearance of the
next _chimango_.
A second red willow was the next largest tree in the plantation, but
of this willow I shall have more to say in a later chapter.
The tall Lombardy poplars were the most numerous of the older trees,
and grew in double rows, forming walks or avenues, on three sides of
the entire enclosed ground.
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