After rain a flying swan may be visible to the eye at a vastly greater
distance than during fair weather; the sun shining on its intense white
plumage against the dark background of a rain-cloud making it
exceedingly conspicuous. The fact that swans are almost always seen
after rain shows only that they are almost always passing.
Whenever we are visited by a dust-storm on the pampas myriads of hooded
gulls--Larus macnlipen-nis--appear flying before the dark dust-cloud,
even when not a gull has been seen for months. Dust-storms are of rare
occurrence, and come only after a long drought, and, the water-courses
being all dry, the gulls cannot have been living in the region over
which the storm passes. Yet in seasons of drought gulls must be
continually passing by at a great height, seeing but not seen, except
when driven together and forced towards the earth by the fury of the
storm.
By August (1873) the owls had vanished, and they had, indeed, good cause
for leaving. The winter had been one of continued drought; the dry grass
and herbage of the preceding year had been consumed by the cattle and
wild animals, or had turned to dust, and with the disappearance of their
food and cover the mice had ceased to be. The famine-stricken cats
sneaked back to the house. It was pitiful to see the little burrowing
owls; for these birds, not having the powerful wings and prescient
instincts of the vagrant Otus brachyotus, are compelled to face the
poverty from which the others escape.
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