Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/14

8 wrens, swallows, finches, flycatchers and hawks to be seen daily, but all in unfamiliar guise.

The Great Magellan owl was enough like our great horned owl to be taken for the same bird. The same might be said of two pygmy owls shot at Laredo Bay, which closely resemble those of our western states and are among the smallest of known owls. The Magellan pygmy, notwithstanding the abundance of its fluffy plumage, is a mere featherweight of less than four ounces. The burrowing owl and sparrow-hawk

did not differ appreciably from home species. In these latitudes the burrowing owl inhabits excavations made by the "viscacha," a rodent of the chinchilla family which lives in communities after the manner of our northern "prairie dog." Lacking the viscachas' burrow, it digs its own. The common barn owl and short-eared owl of worldwide distribution were both present.

Kingfishers, woodpeckers and goldfinches were masquerading along the straits in strange garb, and best disguised of all, a meadow lark with bright crimson breast.

A courageous species of humming-bird penetrates southward into the chilly wilds of Fuegia, and we procured specimens within a few hours of a snow squall which greeted us in one of the western channels. The Patagonian burrowing parrot we found within a few miles of Punta Arenas, where it seemed as much out of place in the driving mist as it would in Alaska.

In the dense forests along Smythe Channel we heard and obtained