They stretch their necks downwards to look beneath, and on
espying the least movement among the foliage, fly off to the more
inaccessible parts of the forest. Solitary Toucans are sometimes
met with at the same season, hopping silently up and down the
larger boughs, and peering into crevices of the tree-trunks. They
moult in the months from March to June, some individuals earlier,
others later. This season of enforced quiet being passed, they
make their appearance suddenly in the dry forest, near Ega, in
large flocks, probably assemblages of birds gathered together
from the neighbouring Ygapo forests, which are then flooded and
cold. The birds have now become exceedingly tame, and the troops
travel with heavy laborious flight from bough to bough among the
lower trees. They thus become an easy prey to hunters, and
everyone at Ega who can get a gun of any sort and a few charges
of powder and shot, or a blow-pipe, goes daily to the woods to
kill a few brace for dinner; for, as already observed, the people
of Ega live almost exclusively on stewed and roasted Toucans
during the months of June and July, the birds being then very fat
and the meat exceedingly sweet and tender.
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