During
the breeding season, they attempt, like our peewits, by feigning to
be wounded, to draw away from their nests dogs and other enemies.
The eggs of this bird are esteemed a great delicacy.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1833.
To the seventh posta at the foot of the Sierra Tapalguen. The
country was quite level, with a coarse herbage and a soft peaty
soil. The hovel was here remarkably neat, the posts and rafters
being made of about a dozen dry thistle-stalks bound together with
thongs of hide; and by the support of these Ionic-like columns, the
roof and sides were thatched with reeds. We were here told a fact,
which I would not have credited, if I had not had partly ocular
proof of it; namely, that, during the previous night, hail as large
as small apples, and extremely hard, had fallen with such violence
as to kill the greater number of the wild animals. One of the men
had already found thirteen deer (Cervus campestris) lying dead, and
I saw their FRESH hides; another of the party, a few minutes after
my arrival, brought in seven more. Now I well know, that one man
without dogs could hardly have killed seven deer in a week. The men
believed they had seen about fifteen dead ostriches (part of one of
which we had for dinner); and they said that several were running
about evidently blind in one eye.
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