Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/73

 one is walking, and then squatting down on their heels, are difficult to distinguish from the surrounding soil. One kind (Hydropsalis psalidurus?) has a long forked tail. In the daytime they are concealed in the wooded ilhas, where I very often saw them crouched and sleeping on the ground in the dense shade. They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground. Their breeding time is in the rainy season, and fresh eggs are found from December to June. Birds have not one uniform time for nidification here, as in temperate latitudes. Gulls and plovers lay in September, when the sand-banks are exposed in midriver in the dry season. Later in the evening, the singular notes of the goatsuckers are heard, one species crying Quao, Quao, another Chuck-co-co-cao; and these are repeated at intervals far into the night in the most monotonous manner. A great number of toads are seen on the bare sandy pathways soon after sunset. One of them was quite a colossus, about seven inches in length and three in height. This big fellow would never move out of the way until we were close to him. If we jerked him out of the path with a stick, he would slowly recover himself, and then turn round to have a good impudent stare. I have counted as many as thirty of these monsters within a distance of half a mile.

The surface of the campos is disfigured in all directions by earthy mounds and conical hillocks, the work of many different species of white ants. Some of these structures are five feet high, and formed of particles of earth worked into a material as hard as