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The rails, active, sprightly birds with powerful and varied voices, are great performers; but owing to the nature of the ground they inhabit and to their shy, suspicious character, it is not easy to observe their antics. The finest of the Platan rails is the ypecaha, a beautiful, active bird about the size of the fowl.
In the ypecaha and jacana displays both sexes take part. A stranger performance is that of the spur-winged lapwing of the same region a species resembling the lapwing of Europe, but a third larger, brighter coloured, and armed with spurs.
And among birds the ypecaha a large La Plata rail might also be mentioned as an example of what ought not to be; for it is a bold and intelligent bird, more than a match for the fowl, both in courage and in cunning; and yet it is one of the family which Professor Parker from the point of view of the anatomist characterizes as a "feeble-minded, cowardly group."
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