File:Our search for a wilderness; an account of two ornithological expeditions to Venezuela and to British Guiana (1910) (14772364643).jpg

Identifier: oursearchforwild00nile (find matches)
Title: Our search for a wilderness; an account of two ornithological expeditions to Venezuela and to British Guiana
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Niles, Blair Beebe, William, 1877-1962
Subjects: Natural history Birds
Publisher: New York, H. Holt and company

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ed from shooting asmuch as possible and chose to make this expedition ratherone of preparation in learning what tropical wood-craft Icould from an excellent Indian hunter, than of gathering acollection and thereby a lengthy list of mere names. When,sometime in the future, we return to this splendid field ofstudy and spend months in careful observation of somesuch limited region, we may hope to add something of realvalue to our knowledge of the ecology of these most inter-esting forms of tropical life. We have the results of thecollector, par-excellence, in our museum cases of thousandsof tropical bird-skins. Now let us learn something of theenvironment and life history of the living birds themselves. It is against my rule to write in diary form, but owing tothe limited time we spent at Aremu and the scries of events,some of which extended over two or three days, I havemade an exception in this case and will put down a lew ofthe incidents of jungle life in the order in which I observed
Text Appearing After Image:
JUNGLE LIFE AT AREMU. 297 them. Far from giving all the observations made here onbirds and other creatures, I have included only those ofgreatest interest, which will convey an idea of the conditionsof life here as compared to those in our northern woods andforests. March 28th. — Leaving the house before noon I crossedthe Little Aremu by a foot bridge, at the western edge of theclearing. The stream here flows gently and smoothly; it isfrom one to four feet deep, and ten to fifteen feet wide.Following it upstream, one is stopped within a few yards bya perfect tangle and maze of interlocked vines and trunksshowing what it was like lower down before the hand ofman hewed and blasted a free channel. The forest aboutthe mine clearing is probably near the extreme, even oftropical growth. One feels absolutely dwarfed as one gazesup — far up, at the lofty branches, where birds like tinyinsects are flying about, in a world by themselves. Thetrunks are clean, hard and straight as marble colu

Note About Images