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Living beings interested me from a very early age, perhaps because I grew up in a small and uncomfortable shack with hardly any toys, but surrounded by a garden-orchard and by neighboring farms far more alluring than home. A bush was likely to contain a nest that my parents urged me to observe but not disturb. A hole in the ground was likely to be the home of a green lizard, a cuy (Guinea pig), a family of country mice, or a harmless snake. The neighbors with chicken coops complained about thefts committed by opossums. Under a tile a fat bullfrog might hibernate. In several trees and on the top of the windmill there were nests of untidy, noisy, quarrelsome, and thievish jays, as well as of quiet spinels, said to be lifelong monogamous couples. Hummingbirds were often flitting above the honey-suckle vines. The triumphal song of the benteveo (Great kiskadee) was often heard nearly everywhere. And the industrious ovenbird, the national bird, would always announce the end of a rainfall. How I miss them!

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-29251-9_11

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