The bird life around San Agustin was varied and abundant. Trees were in blossom, especially one with a feathery, pinkish flower (_Mimosa_), and to this scores of hummers came. One species had a slightly curved bill and was green in color, with a patch of deepest purple on the throat; another of a blue color had tail-feathers six inches long. In the ravines there were many chachalacas that kept up a demoniacal cackling. The bushes were full of finches and lovely velvety red tanagers, while honey-creepers came to our table daily and gorged themselves on sugar. In the forest we saw many large, woolly monkeys, some bluish, others silvery gray. There were kinkajous, agoutis, and peccaries. The two-toed sloth was abundant; the flesh of all these animals was greedily eaten by the natives. Numbers of large lizards or iguanas prowled about the town and feasted on the tiny chickens and ducklings. A flight of locusts covered the entire upper Magdalena, and for days the air was black with the pest; millions would rise from the ground in a steady cloud in front of us as we walked along through the fields. In a few days not a speck of green remained. The hungry, insatiable hordes moved on, but behind them remained a wide, brown desert, filled with sorrow and desolation, for the crops of corn, yuccas, and bananas had been destroyed and there would be famine for many months to come. [Illustration: A mountain stream, such as the Rio Naranjos, where the cock-of-the-rock spends its existence.]