B

A VERSATILE HAWK.

ESIDES that hypothetical kind of variation in instincts called "spontaneous," there are other common variations in everyday habits due simply to experience and tradition; and by tradition I mean the example of parents, or other adults, imitated by the young. The intelligence of a species or of a family, however, is seldom found distributed over the whole range of its actions, but more frequently develops itself in one particular line, or set of actions; for it is here, as with structure, where one organ acquires the "habit of varying," while all other parts remain unchanged. This, at any rate, can be said of the Milvago chimango, which in seeking food has acquired a character to distinguish it even in a strikingly versatile sub-family.

Azara says of the caracara eagle: "All methods of subsistence are known to this bird: it pries into, understands, and takes advantage of everything." These words apply best to the chimango, which has probably the largest bill of fare of any bird, and has grafted on to its own peculiar manner of life the habits of twenty diverse species. By turns it is a falcon, a vulture, an insect-eater, a vegetable-eater. On the same day you will see one bird in violent hawk-like pursuit of its living prey, with all the instincts of rapine hot within it, and another less ambitious individual engaged in laboriously tearing at an old cast-off shoe, uttering mournful notes the while, but probably more concerned at the tenacity of the material than at its indigestibility.

A species so cosmopolitan in its tastes might have had a whole volume to itself in England; being only a poor foreigner, it has had no more than a few unfriendly paragraphs bestowed upon it. For it happens to be a member of that South American sub-familyPolyborine by name-of which even grave naturalists have spoken slightingly, calling them vile, cowardly, contemptible birds; and the chimango is nearly least of them all-a sort of poor relation and hanger-on of a family already looked upon as bankrupt and disreputable. Despite this evil reputation, I do not shrink from writing its biography, nor do I overrate the importance of my subject; for throughout an extensive portion of South America it is the commonest bird we know ; and when we consider how closely connected are the lives of all living

creatures by means of their interlacing relations, that the predominance of any one kind, however innocuous, necessarily causes the modification, or extinction even, of surrounding species, we are better able to appreciate the importance of this despised fowl in the natural polity. Add to this its protean habits, and then, however poor a creature our bird may seem, and deserving of strange-sounding epithets from an ethical point of view, I do not know where the naturalist will find a more interesting one.

The chimango is always to be seen at the Zoological Gardens ; but as few birds less interesting in appearance are to be found in our modern Noah's Ark, the reader will have little recollection of it. In size and figure it closely resembles the hen-harrier, and the plumage is uniformly of a light sandy-brown colour; the shanks are slender, claws weak, and beak so slightly hooked it seems like the merest apology of the falcon's tearing weapon. It has an easy loitering flight, and when on the wing does not appear to have an object in view, like the hawk, but wanders and prowls about here and there, and when it spies another bird it flies after him to see if he has food in his eye. When one finds something to eat, the others try to deprive him of it, pursuing him with great determination all over the sky; if the foremost pursuer flags, a fresh bird takes its place, until the object of so much contention-perhaps after all only a bit of skin or boneis dropped to the ground, to be instantly snatched up by some bird in the tail of the chase; and he in turn becomes the pursued of all the others. This continues till one grows tired and leaves off watching them without seeing the result. They are loquacious and sociable, frequently congregating in loose companies of thirty or forty individuals, when they spend several hours every day in spirited exercises, soaring about like martins, performing endless evolutions, and joining in aërial mock battles. After that they all settle down, to remain for an hour or so perched on the topmost boughs of trees or other elevations; and at intervals one bird utters a very long leisurely chant, followed by a series of short notes, all the other birds joining in chorus and uttering short notes in time with those of their soloist or precentor. The nest is built on trees or rushes in swamps, or on the ground amongst grass and thistles. The eggs are three or four in number, nearly spherical, blotched with deep red on a white or creamy ground; sometimes the whole egg is marbled with red; but there are endless varieties. It is easy to find the nest, and becomes easier when there are young birds, for the parent when out foraging invariably returns to her young uttering long mournful notes, so that one has only to listen and mark the spot where she alights. After visiting

a nest, I have always found the young birds quickly disappear, and as the old birds vanish also, I presume the chimango has the habit of removing its young when the nest has been discovered-a rare habit with birds.

Chimangos abound most in settled districts, but a prospect of food will quickly bring numbers together even in the most solitary places. On the desert pampas, where hunters, Indian or European, have a great fancy for burning the dead grass, the moment the smoke of a distant fire is seen there the chimangos fly to follow the conflagration. They are, at such times, strangely animated, dashing through clouds of smoke, feasting amongst the hot ashes on roasted cavies, and cther small mammals, or boldly pursuing the scorched fugitives from the flames.

At all times in all places the chimango is ever ready to pounce on the weak, the sickly, and the wounded. In other regions of the globe these doomed ones fall into the clutches of the true bird of prey; but the salutary office of executioner is so effectually performed by the chimango and his congeners where these false hawks abound, that the true hawks have a much keener struggle to exist here. This circumstance has possibly served to make them swifter of wing, keener of sight, and bolder in attack than elsewhere. I have seen a buzzard, which is not considered the bravest of the hawks, turn quick as lightning on a Cayenne lapwing, which was pursuing it, and grappling it bear it down to the ground and despatch it in a moment, though a hundred other lapwings were uttering piercing screams above it. Yet this plover is a large, powerful, fierce-tempered bird, and armed with sharp spurs on its wings. This is but one of numberless instances I have witnessed of the extreme strength and daring of our hawks.

When shooting birds to preserve, I used to keep an anxious eye on the movements of the chimangos flying about, for I have had some fine specimens carried off or mutilated by these omnipresent robbers. One winter day I came across a fine Tanioptera variegata, a pretty and graceful tyrant-bird, rather larger than the common thrush, with a chocolate and silver-grey plumage. It was rare in that place, andanxious to secure it I fired a very long shot, for it was extremely shy. It rose up high in the air and flew off apparently unconcerned. What, then, was my surprise to see a chimango start off in pursuit of it! Springing on to my horse, I followed, and before going a mile noticed the tyrant-bird beginning to show signs of distress. After avoiding several blows aimed by the chimango, it flew down and plunged into a cardoon bush. There I captured it, and, when skinning it to

preserve, found that one small shot had lodged in the fleshy portion of the breast. It was a very slight wound, yet the chimango with its trained sight had noticed something wrong with the bird from the moment it flew off, apparently in its usual free buoyant manner.

On another occasion I was defrauded of a more valuable specimen than the tyrant-bird. It was on the east coast of Patagonia, when one morning while seated on an elevation, watching the waves dashing themselves on the shore, I perceived a shining white object tossing about at some distance from land. Successive waves brought it nearer, till at last it was caught up and flung far out on to the shingle, fifty yards from where I sat; and instantly, before the cloud of spray had vanished, a chimango dashed down upon it. I jumped up and ran down as fast as I could, and found my white object to be a penguin, apparently fresh killed by some accident out at sea, and in splendid plumage; but, alas! in that moment the vile chimango had stripped off and devoured the skin from its head, so that as a specimen it was hopelessly ruined.

As a rule, strong healthy birds despise the chimango; they feed in his company-his sudden appearance causes no alarm, and they do not take the trouble to persecute him; but when they have eggs or young he is not to be trusted. He is not easily turned from a nest he has once discovered. I have seen him carry off a young tyrantbird (Milvulus violentus), in the face of such an attack from the parent birds that one would have imagined not even an eagle could have weathered such a tempest. Curiously enough, like one of the boldest of our hawks (Tinnunculus sparverius), they sometimes attack birds so much too strong and big for them that they must know the assault will produce more annoyance than harm. I was once watching a flock of coots feeding on a grassy bank, when a passing chimango paused in its flight, and, after hovering over them a few moments, dashed down upon them with such impetuosity that several birds were thrown to the ground by the quick successive blows of its wings. There they lay on their backs, kicking, apparently too much terrified to get up, while the chimango deliberately eyed them for some moments, then quietly flew away, leaving them to dash into the water and cool their fright. Attacks like these are possibly made in a sportive spirit, for the milvago is a playful bird, and, as with many other species, bird and mammal, its play always takes the form of attack.

Its inefficient weapons compel it to be more timid than the hawk, but there are many exceptions, and in every locality individual birds are found distinguished by their temerity. Almost any shepherd can

say that his flock is subject to the persecutions of at least one pair of lamb-killing birds. They prowl about the flock, and watch till a small lamb is found sleeping at some distance from its dam, then rush upon it, and, clinging to its head, eat away its nose and tongue. The shepherd is then obliged to kill the lamb; but I have seen many lambs that have been permitted to survive the mutilation, and which have grown to strong, healthy sheep, though with greatly disfigured faces. One more instance I will give of the boldness of a bird of which Azara says that it might possibly have courage enough to attack a mouse, though he doubts it. But Azara is an authority only outside of the countries about which he wrote; we read him for the charm of his simple, quaint style; he is the Gilbert White of South America. Close to my house, when I was a boy, a pair of these birds had their nest near a narrow path leading through a thicket of giant thistles, and every time I traversed this path the male bird, which, contrary to the rule with birds of prey, is larger and bolder than the female, would rise high above me, then dashing down, strike my horse a violent blow on the forehead with its wings. This action it would repeat till I was out of the path. I thought it very strange the bird never struck my head; but I presently discovered that it had an excellent reason for what it did. The gauchos ride by preference on horses never properly tamed, and one neighbour informed me that he was obliged every day to make a circuit of half a mile round the thistles, as the horses he rode became quite unmanageable in the path, they had been so terrified with the attacks of the chimango.

Where the intelligence of the bird appears to be really at fault is in its habit of attacking a sore-backed horse, tempted thereto by the sight of a raw spot, and apparently not understanding that the flesh it wishes to devour is an inseparable part of the whole animal. Darwin has noticed this curious blunder of the bird; and I have often seen a chafed saddle-horse wildly scouring the plain closely pursued by a hungry chimango determined to dine on a portion of him.

In the hot season, when marshes and lagoons are drying up, the chimango is seen associating with ibises and other waders, standing knee-deep in the water, and watching for tadpoles, frogs, and other aquatic prey. He also wades after a very different kind of food. At the bottom of pools, collected on clayey soil after a summer shower, an edible fungus grows of a dull greenish colour, and resembling gelatine. He has found out that this fungus is good for food, though I never saw any other creature eating it. In cultivated districts he