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.
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