When he promised “Canje Pheasants,” or Hoatzins[11] in his back yard, and thousands of Ducks flying past every day, we smiled as we remembered the Hoatzins in the depths of the Venezuelan mangroves. But, exaggerated as we believed his enthusiastic reports to be, we were glad indeed to accept his invitation to spend a week at the bungalow on the rice plantation. We ultimately found that he had actually understated the conditions of bird life on the Abary! On April 12th, Milady and I took the funny little compartment train for Abary Bridge, or, as our ticket read, Belladrum, which we reached at 9.30 after a two hours’ slow ride. The land along the coast is all flat savanna, dotted for the first half of the journey with tumbled down coolie huts and tiny dyked fields of pale green young rice. Later for some distance these give place to large groves of cocoanuts. On the left, stretch the seawall dykes, relics of Dutch industry, perfected by the English. Throughout the entire journey, hundreds, sometimes thousands of birds were in sight, often for several miles in succession; but as exactly similar scenes were later visible and at closer range on our up-river trip, I will not repeat myself. The train was stopped for our benefit at the bridge across the so-called Abary River, which proved to be a little stream only about a hundred and twenty-five feet wide. Loading our luggage and ourselves into a fussy little launch we chugged up-river for three hours. Along the right bank—the leeward—for most of the distance, grew an irregular fringe of bushes and low trees. Beyond, almost to the horizon, stretched the vast savanna, covered with reeds, rushes and tall coarse grass, each a pure culture in its place of occurrence. Scattered over this great expanse were myriads of birds of many species, the only other visible living creatures being a small herd of half-wild cattle here and there. [Illustration: FIG. 143. AMERICAN EGRET ON THE ABARY RIVER SAVANNA.]