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Updated: May 8, 2025
For some weeks after the invasion the chakar wandered about the country, visiting all the ruined estancias, apparently in quest of human beings, and on arriving at Mangrullos, which had not been burnt and was still inhabited, it settled down at ones and never afterwards showed any disposition to go away.
The heavenward flight of a large bird is always a magnificent spectacle; that of the chakar is peculiarly fascinating on account of the resounding notes it sings while soaring, and in which the bird seems to exult in its sublime power and freedom. I was once very much surprised at the behaviour of a couple of chakars during a thunderstorm.
It may be added that like all sociable animals, the chakar easily becomes tame and grows very attached to man." They are mild-tempered birds, and very rarely quarrel" we are told although they are well provided with formidable weapons. Life in societies renders these weapons useless.
Screamer being a misnomer, I prefer to call the bird by its vernacular name of chaja, or chakar, a more convenient spelling. With the chakar the sexes are faithful, even in very large flocks the birds all being ranged in couples. When one bird begins to sing its partner immediately joins, but with notes entirely different in quality.
The man had a swarthy, beardless face, and it was conjectured that the chakar associated him in its mind with the savages who had destroyed its early home. Close to the house there was a lagoon, never dry, which was frequently visited by flocks of wild chakars.
When taken young the chakar becomes very tame and attached to man, showing no inclination to go back to a wild life. There was one kept at an estancia called Mangrullos, on the western frontier of Buenos Ayres, and the people of the house gave me a very curious account of it.
The chakar leaves its grass-plot after feeding and soars purely for recreation, taking so much pleasure in its aerial exercises that in bright warm weather, in winter and spring, it spends a great part of the day in the upper regions of the air. On the earth its air is grave and its motions measured and majestic, and it rises with immense labour, the wings producing a sound like a high wind.
The intelligence, docility, and attachment to man displayed by the chakar in a domestic state, with perhaps other latent aptitudes only waiting to be developed by artificial selection, seem to make this species one peculiarly suited for man's protection, without which it must inevitably perish.
When it ceased my host remarked with a smile, "We are accustomed to this, senor every evening we have this concert." It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to hear. But the chakar country is just now in a transitional state, and the precise conditions which made it possible for birds so large in size to form such immense congregations are rapidly passing away.
They entered the great ward in the main hold of the ship. Here were avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some were sitting up the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the kangha and the chakar, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring, which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry.
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