Page:The birds of Tierra del Fuego - Richard Crawshay.djvu/70

8 The Chimango is another great personality, and one entering very much into the daily life of man, not only in uninhabited regions but more particularly in settlements.

Plentiful as it is. I came away without a skin. I shot one with the •410 at Rio McClelland Settlement, but the nostril was so much damaged that I decided to procure a better specimen, and ultimately did not do so.

The Chimango is so well known and has been so often described by previous observers that it leaves me no ground to record anything original of its life habits.

Azara. D'Orbigny. Darwin, and others have written on it at considerable length.

It is the commonest of the birds of prey, yet hardly a bird of prey in the accepted sense, as it is entirely a scavenger except for insects. There are always some to be seen in settlements. It also frequents uninhabited regions—open country, the outskirts of forests, and the sea shore where I have seen as many as twenty or thirty together. For one of its kind, it is tame and unusually gentle. In man it recognizes a useful friend. Its petulant "C-h-i-i-i" is almost as familiar a sound in settlements as the cackling of the poultry whose food it shares under protest from them.

Of it and the nearly-allied Chimachima. Azara tersely observes that:—they differ from the Caracard "en no embestir d ningun páxaro ni animal, sino quando mucho á algun Ratoncito, y lo dudo. Yuelan con mas descanso, se suelen polvorizar como las Gallinas, prefieren para posarse los árboles secarrones, y á éstos los montoncitos de tierra ó piedras, y no tienen pelada la frente ni el buche."

"Comme le Carácará," says D'Orbigny, "11 s'attache à l'homme dans ses établissements, dans ses migrations, dans ses voyages; il a le vol du Carácará, ses manières vives et bruyantes, son esprit querelleur; mais ici, différant de son modèle, il ne tourmente, n'attaque, ne combat que les oiseaux de son espèce; et, sans doute en raison du sentiment de sa faiblesse, ne poursuit