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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