Bird life seems much more abundant on this western side of the island than on the east. Black parrots exist in great numbers and may be heard screeching all the day long. But perhaps the birds which are more numerous still are the small green and white parakeet (_Sàrivàzo_), which fly about from tree to tree in large flocks, all ceaselessly chirping during their rapid flight. My friend, Mr Baron, says: “A flock of them settling on a bare tree gives it the appearance of being covered with foliage. On one or two occasions what we thought were the leaves of trees suddenly disappeared, leaving the branches entirely bare. The ‘leaves’ turned out to be parakeets.” Guinea-fowl, in flocks of six to a dozen, are also abundant. The handsome long-tailed green _Tsìkirìoka_ (the Madagascar bee-eater) is found here, and builds its nest in holes in sand-banks; some of these run in a horizontal direction for above a yard. A very pretty hoopoe (_Tàkodàra_) may occasionally be seen, a bird which is extremely active and graceful in its movements. It gives forth five or six very weird notes, as it sits on a tree during the night. A species of sand-grouse, called _Gàdragàdraka_, a bird of a beautiful fawn-colour, much like a pigeon in general appearance, may often be heard. Like many other native bird names, this name is very expressive of its chuckling. Many of the birds found in the central parts of the island exist also here, while there are also others peculiar to this western region. Part of our fifth and the whole of our sixth and last day’s land journey was taken at no great distance from the Ikòpa river; and I began to wonder where the western forest-belt was; for, as we have seen, we had passed through no such masses of dense forest as must be crossed anywhere on the eastern side of the island when one comes up to the interior of Madagascar. The fact seems to be that there is no such continuous wooded region on the western side. There is, in many places, a considerable amount of country covered with forest, but these are not connected, and a great deal of the surface has scattered clumps of trees. In the same way also, there are nothing like the difficult ascents and deep gorges to be crossed on this route such as are described in Chapters IV. and V. The descent to the level western plains is gradual; so that a railway to the north-west ports, along the valleys of the Ikòpa and Bétsibòka rivers, would, although longer, present very much less engineering difficulty than that from Tamatave to the capital. [Sidenote: A DIFFICULT PROBLEM]