Their flight was uniform, each bird giving three to six flaps and then sailing ahead for several seconds. Hundreds doing this at once made the sight a most striking one, while it was enhanced by their long, wedge-shaped tails, high arched beaks, bright yellow eyes, and the iridescence of their dark plumage as the slanting rays of the sun struck them. We counted up to a thousand in the van and then gave up—there were at the very least four thousand birds in the flock. The approach of the puffing launch and our great escort of Ibises and Herons disconcerted them and the entire company broke up, most of them descending, turning on their course and fleeing ahead of us for several miles. Their mode of flight changed completely, the birds flying close to the water, barely skimming its surface and swinging up every few yards to alight on a low branch. A piece of wood thrown among a mass of them would cause great dismay, and they dashed down into the nearest foliage as if a Hawk had appeared. Little by little they drifted past, flying rapidly near shore, and continuing in the direction which they had originally chosen. A few of the birds were moulting, but by far the greater number were in perfect plumage. The flock had the appearance of being on some sort of migration rather than assembling at a nightly roost. About Georgetown and the settlements and clearings in general, this Greater Ani was much rarer then the small Smooth-billed species,[80] twenty of the latter being seen to one of the former. These aberrant Cuckoos are most interesting birds and several females are said to combine, building a single hollow nest of sticks in which the eggs are hatched. Hardly had the last Ani passed out of sight when a second cloud of birds appeared far ahead, and before we had approached near enough to identify them a shrill chorus came to our ears; a horde of Blue-headed Parrots[65] were on their way up the coast. They behaved in much the same way as the Anis, but were more numerous: an estimate far below the truth gave eight thousand. Closely massed though most of them were, yet the eternal two and two formation of the tribe of Parrots was never lost, and even when the vanguard, terrified by our puffing launch, wheeled and dashed back through the ranks behind, each Parrot flew always close to its mate. Once later on, when only a few scores were left near us, we saw several perched in a bare tree close to a Hawk, like a Sparrow Hawk in size, but neither species paid any attention to the other’s presence. The Parrots screamed unceasingly and near the main body the noise was terrific—a shrill deafening roar, as from a dozen factory whistles. Until long after dark they flew back and forth around us, sometimes attempting to alight in a tree and falling from branch to branch almost to the water, before securing a foot or beak-hold. For several hours perfect pandemonium reigned around us.