Crossword-Solution: COURLAN 7 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

One is the courlan, called "crazy widow" from its mourning plumage and long melancholy screams, which on still evenings may be heard a league away.

Thus Iriarte:-- "Atencion! que la vanduria he templado." If one could get a banjo with brass strings so big that it could be heard a mile and a half away, a dozen strokes dealt in swift succession on one string would produce a sound resembling the call of this Ibis--a voice of the desolate marshes, which competes in power with the outrageous human-like shrieks of the Ypecaha Rail, the long resounding wails of the Crazy Widow or Courlan, and the morning song of the Crested Screamer.

This beak is a most effective instrument in opening shells; for where mollusks abound the Courlan subsists exclusively on them, so that the margins of the streams which this bird frequents are strewn with innumerable shells lying open and emptied of their contents.

Mussels and clams close their shells so tightly that it would perhaps be impossible for a bird to insert his beak, however knife-like in shape and hardness, between the valves in order to force them open; therefore I believe the Courlan first feels the shell with his foot whilst wading, then with quick dexterity strikes his beak into it before it closes, and so conveys it to the shore.

These cries are most melancholy, and, together with its mourning plumage and recluse habits, have won for the Courlan several pretty vernacular names.