The most striking of the newcomers was the small scarlet tyrant-bird,
which is about the size of our spotted flycatcher; all a shining
scarlet except the black wings and tail. This bird had a delicate
bell-like voice, but it was the scarlet colour shining amid the green
foliage which made me delight in it above all other birds. Yet the
humming-bird, which arrived at the same time, was wonderfully
beautiful too, especially when he flew close to your face and remained
suspended motionless on mist-like wings for a few moments, his
feathers looking and glittering like minute emerald scales.

Then came other tyrant-birds and the loved swallows--the house-
swallow, which resembles the English house-martin, the large purple
martin, the _Golodrina domestica_, and the brown tree-martin. Then,
too, came the yellow-billed cuckoo--the _kowe-kowe_ as it is called
from its cry. Year after year I listened for its deep mysterious call,
which sounded like _gow-gow-gow-gow-gow,_ in late September, even as
the small English boy listens for the call of _his_ cuckoo, in April;
and the human-like character of the sound, together with the
startlingly impressive way in which it was enunciated, always produced
the idea that it was something more than a mere bird call. Later, in
October when the weather was hot, I would hunt for the nest, a frail
platform made of a few sticks with four or five oval eggs like those
of the turtledove in size and of a pale green colour.

There were other summer visitors, but I must not speak of them as this
chapter contains too much on that subject. My feathered friends were
so much to me that I am constantly tempted to make this sketch of my
first years a book about birds and little else. There remains, too,
much more to say about the plantation, the trees and their effect on