240 BULLETIN 2 OS, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



and hence was of the opinion that it was a bird of essentially solitary 

 disposition. Yet Chapin's encounter with the bird involved two 

 individuals together. In his second paper Rougeot mentions that on 

 one occasion his native hunter told him that he had heard, at a nearby 

 plantation, several of these birds calling ("talking indignantly") at 

 the same time. Although ho set out immediately for the spot, 

 Rougeot failed to find or hear the species there. 



The note which Chapin transcribes as nyHe Rougeot writes as 

 hein-hein. He noted a maximum of 35 of these notes on one occasion, 

 and writes that the sounds of increasing intensity are always more 

 numerous than those of decreasing strength; on an average he counted 

 five to nine of the former as against two to five of the latter per second. 

 Each series was terminated by some powerful sonorous sounds char- 

 acterized by an accelerated rhythm. The "calling" is usually most 

 frequent from 8 a. m. until noon. Frequently, if not usually, the first 

 syllable of the nyUe sound is more prolonged and lower in tone than the 

 second, and at times may be entirely eliminated. There are usually 

 10 to 15 of these nyete notes in a series. 



Once Rougeot noted a lyre-tail flying like a woodpecker, opening 

 its white-bordered tail both in soaring and in diving flight. Then it 

 rested like a woodpecker on a branch, leaning on its tail which ap- 

 peared somewhat forked, and then took off and disappeared. 



To translate further from Rougeot's notes: On July 9, toward 10:45 

 a. m., a bird was seen flying slowly with a noticeable undulation at a 

 low altitude ; little by little it rose in the sky and made large spirals, 

 and then larger and larger ones (the distances involved estimated by 

 comparison with the largest trees nearby). At one moment it was 

 seen flying with rapid wing beats, when suddenly it ended its ascent 

 and hovered for an instant like a hawk about to swoop down on its 

 prey, and then began to descend rapidly in a series of dives, like a 

 series of large stairs. Then ho heard, but far from the bird, under the 

 same forested hills from which it reverberated, the extraordinary 

 sound of the lyre-tail. This last — for such it was — went a little higher 

 and the intensity of the vibrations diminished, and then it slid with 

 increasing speed toward the forest where it disappeared and the 

 amplified noise ended with the finish of the bud's descent. Then, by 

 chance, another Melichneutes was seen, just an instant before it began 

 its noisy fall; it dived, ascended again after a short horizontal flight, 

 and again shot down toward the forest canop}^ with increasing speed, 

 landed (apparently) and was lost to sight and sound. 



A fortnight later, at the same place, Rougeot heard the bird swoop- 

 ing above the forest several times and finally saw it in the very gray 

 sky at 9:30 a. m. It mounted in large, irregular spirals, beating its 

 wings rapidly and descending with great speed after flying about 



