Identifier: essaysphotograph00harr (find matches)
Title: Essays and photographs. Some birds of the Canary Islands and South Africa
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Harris, Henry E
Subjects: Birds -- Canary Islands Birds -- South Africa
Publisher: London, R. H. Porter
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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th in Fuerteventura ; he told us,through the medium of Lorenzo, who generally consti-tuted himself spokesman, that only a few days previouslyhe had seen two Engafias eggs, but that he had puthis foot on them and broken them. Lorenzo was verymuch enraged at this and took the unfortunate boyby the shoulders, shaking him and calling him Malomuchacho, interspersed with sundry mutterings whichwere unintelligible to me. The breaking of every eggthey find is a habit of the boys both in Tenerife andFuerteventura ; they couldnt tell you why, but theyalways do it. You may offer them a reward consequenton the eggs being intact on the following day, but it israrely you find them so. About the middle of the day one of the boys shoutedto us, telling us that he had found a Houbara Bustardsnest on the summit of a low hill. There was only oneegg, which was of an olive-green colour, marked withrather faint blotches of greenish-brown ; this had beenlaid on the bare ground, the earth having been hollowed
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o LA OLIVA 27 out very slightly to receive it. The accompanyingphotograph gives a good idea of the situation in whichthe egg was placed. Round about were a good manywhite stones, and orowincr amon^ these stones wasa plant which we found rather common near here,though we never saw it elsewhere in Fuerteventura.Lorenzo pronounced this plant to be tacaionteia, andas no one was in a position to be able to contradicthim, I think he felt that for the time being he haddistinguished himself. This plant grows also in Tene-rife, and has a large bulb with leaves something likethose of the lily-of-the-valley sprouting out from it. We saw something of the birds belonging to this nest,as they flew round while I was photographing the egg,and settled some distance away; they have a powerful,rather heavy-looking flight, and keep the neck stretchedstraight out when on the wing. Their local name,Avutarda, means a heavy, slow sort of bird. It was evident that the Houbaras and the Coursers,the two kinds o

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