It has curiously sluggish habits,
rising only when almost trodden upon, and going off in a wild sacred
manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a
short distance. The natives call it _dormilon_--sleepy-head. On one
side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was
always a breeding-colony of these quaint birds; at every few yards one
would spring up close to the hoofs, and dismounting we would find the
little nest on the wet ground under the grass, always with two eggs so
thickly blotched all over with black as to appear almost entirely
black.
There were other rushy lagoons at a greater distance which we visited
only at long intervals, and one of these I must describe, as it was
almost more attractive than any one of the others on account of its
bird life. Here, too, there were some kinds which we never found
breeding elsewhere.
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.
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