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To the bark of the coyote, the bay of the bigger wolf, and the buzzard's hoarse croak, a caracara adds its shrill note; the fiend-like chorus further strengthened by the scream of the white-headed eagle for all the world like the filing of a frame saw, and not unlike the wild, unmeaning laughter of a madman.
Beasts and birds are its only habitual denizens; its groves the chosen perching place of sweet songsters; its openings the range of the prong-horn antelope and black-tailed deer; while soaring above, or seated on prominent points of the precipice, may be seen the caracara, the buzzard, and bald-headed eagle.
In this list may be included four species of the Caracara or Polyborus, the Turkey buzzard, the Gallinazo, and the Condor. The Caracaras are, from their structure, placed among the eagles: we shall soon see how ill they become so high a rank.
When the caracara is quietly seated on the branch of a tree or on the ground, the chimango often continues for a long time flying backwards and forwards, up and down, in a semicircle, trying each time at the bottom of the curve to strike its larger relative. The caracara takes little notice, except by bobbing its head.
The pastures are destitute of flowers, and also of animal life, with the exception of a few small plain-coloured birds and solitary Caracara eagles whining from the topmost branches of dead trees on the forest borders. A few settlers have built their palm- thatched and mud-walled huts on the banks of the Mahica, and occupy themselves chiefly in tending small herds of cattle.
It is a smaller and more graceful bird: its white feathers are tipped with black at the extremities, and the black ones in like manner are tipped with white. These birds in vast numbers inhabit the wide-extended plains, and afford a welcome addition to the food of their roving inhabitants. The largest caracara Polyborus Braziliensis ranges the grassy savannahs of La Plata.
Hills rose on hills in fine gradation, all covered with trees of gigantic height and size. Here their leaves were of a lively purple, and there of the deepest green. Sometimes the caracara extended its scarlet blossoms from branch to branch, and gave the tree the appearance as though it had been hung with garlands.
If a party of men go out hunting with dogs and horses, they will be accompanied during the day by several of these attendants. The flight of the caracara is heavy and slow, and it is generally an inactive, tame, and cowardly bird. It destroys young lambs, by tearing the umbilical cord; and it pursues the gallinaso till that bird is compelled to vomit up the carrion it may have recently gorged.
I believe that naturalists call this bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the order of the Apicides, and to the family of the vultures. Some good old Bonapartist soldiers, who had retired to the village, went to see this creature with great devotion. The mountebanks gave out that the tricolored cockade was a unique phenomenon made by God expressly for their menagerie.
They had difficulty in preventing their canine companion from being seized before their eyes. It will frequently wait, as does the caracara, at the mouth of a rabbit-hole, and seize on the animal when it comes out. It is also very mischievous and inquisitive. It will pick up almost anything from the ground: a large black glazed hat was carried nearly a mile, as were a pair of heavy bolas.
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