A pair of Great Green Cassiques[150] had swung their four-foot pendent nest from the tallest limb of a tree standing in the water, and we spent ten minutes watching the male court his mate. As he uttered his incoherent medley of liquid cowbell-like notes, he bent his neck, thrusting his head far downward and forward, and at the same time throwing both wings forward and around in a semicircle. As this curious action was completed, the vocal utterance came to a close and the performance was over. The early stages in the evolution of such a courtship may be observed in our common Cowbird of the north, and a further developed stage in the little Guiana Cowbird. THE CITY OF THE CASSIQUES. On the first day of our arrival, even before we came in sight of the clearing, we heard the cries of the splendid big Orioles or Cassiques, known all over Guiana as Bunyahs. In the creek bed below the dam, but within the radius of the clearing, stood a medium sized tree and among its branches a colony of Scarlet-backed Cassiques[152] were flying back and forth from their nests. We made a mental note of them at the time but passed on without giving them more than a glance. Later near the bungalow we occasionally saw them in small numbers associating, as we have already stated, with the Lavender Jays.[161] As we wished to take a number of young Cassiques back to New York with us and to study the colony as thoroughly as we could in the space of a week’s time, we started out early one morning for the Cassiques’ tree. The long pendent nests were all seventy feet or more from the ground. Taking the rusty climbing irons from their case, we recalled vividly the last time they had been in use—a cold June day in Nova Scotia, when the nesting hole of a Three-toed Woodpecker had been the goal. How different were these tropical surroundings! Bravely the start up the tree was made; jab and pull, jab and pull, while the straps pressed in on ankle and knee, giving that peculiar sensation that cannot be described, but which every climbing naturalist knows so well. Ten, twenty, thirty feet were scaled, and then one’s hand on the opposite side of the trunk broke through some tiny earthen tunnels, and, like many an unfortunate telegraph-line-man, struck a live wire. At least, the sensation was very much the same, only the electric shocks were here progressive, and when they had reached the elbow, they were seen to be a numerous and enthusiastically defensive horde of ants. At one end a pair of jaws gave a firm point of leverage and attachment, whereby the insect could secure a footing while operating the sting from the opposite end of his anatomy.