It is literally an
ideal place in which a field naturalist could spend six months or a
year. It is readily accessible, it offers an almost virgin field for
work, and the life would be healthy as well as delightfully
attractive. The man should have a steam-launch. In it he could with
comfort cover all parts of the country from south of Corumbra to north
of Cuyaba and Caceres. There would have to be a good deal of
collecting (although nothing in the nature of butchery should be
tolerated), for the region has only been superficially worked,
especially as regards mammals. But if the man were only a collector he
would leave undone the part of the work best worth doing. The region
offers extraordinary opportunities for the study of the life-histories
of birds which, because of their size, their beauty, or their habits,
are of exceptional interest. All kinds of problems would be worked
out. For example, on the morning of the 3rd, as we were ascending the
Paraguay, we again and again saw in the trees on the bank big nests of
sticks, into and out of which parakeets were flying by the dozen. Some
of them had straws or twigs in their bills. In some of the big
globular nests we could make out several holes of exit or entrance.
Apparently these parakeets were building or remodelling communal
nests; but whether they had themselves built these nests, or had taken
old nests and added to or modified them, we could not tell.
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