320 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



vermilion red, with feet, and spots on the under side, of steel blue. 

 This little creature was very abundant and produced a noise out of 

 all proportion to its size. The notes were very metallic, sounding 

 much like strokes on the orchestral triangle, each individual having 

 a more or less different pitch. The din was terrific until one became 

 used to it. We called this performance the " anvil chorus." But in no 

 part of Costa Eica did I hear a tumult of sounds such as emanate 

 from the throats of the several species of frogs and toads during 

 early spring evenings in parts of the United States, especially in 

 marshy or swampy localities in the Middle "West, where the com- 

 bined voices of thousands of individuals of a single species (Rana 

 areolata) produce a continuous roar. No owl was heard with a voice 

 as loud or startling as the who-who-who-are you of our common 

 barred owl; nor any other night bird with a more vigorous voice 

 than our whippoorwill and chuck-will's-widow. Throughout the 

 country, except the higher regions, the most frequent night sounds 

 were the monotonous kuk, kuk, kuk (many times repeated) of a 

 diminutive owl {Glaucidium phalaenoides) and the much louder and 

 more plaintive call of the Cuiejo (pronounced coo-ya-ho), a species 

 of goat-sucker {Nyctidromus albicollis) about the size of our whip- 

 poorwill. This sounds like a repetition of the words coo-yd-ho; 

 coo-coo-ydho. At high altitudes another species (Antrostomus satu- 

 ratus) so closely reproduced the call of our whippoorwill that the 

 only difference we could detect was a harsh quality, or "burr," 

 wanting in the notes of our bird. 



At Bonilla Ave occasionally heard at night the gruff call — between 

 a cough and short roar — of the jaguar; and once while out hunting, 

 we saw a herd of cattle stampeded by one of these ferocious brutes, 

 which kill many cattle on the estate. 16 It is said that the jaguar 

 never makes two meals off one of its victims but for each meal makes 

 a fresh "kill." Whether this is really true I do not know. It is 

 also said that the jaguar springs upon the shoulders of its prey and 

 kills it by twisting the head with such force as to break the poor 

 creature's neck. 



While the nocturnal sounds were, to us, disappointing, there was, 

 as compensation (and to most people a far more attractive entertain- 

 ment) , a nocturnal sight for which we in the North have no parallel. 

 This is the splended pyrotechnic display made by thousands of large 

 beetles called, in Costa Rica, Carbuncle, 17 similar in form to our 

 so-called " snapping bugs " and resembling in size and shape that 

 large species of the eastern United States having a pair of oval 

 black spots upon the thorax (the general color being a dusty or 

 finely mottled gray) ; but the tropical species is of a plain reddish 



10 We were informed that 22 head had been killed at Bonilla in one week by jaguars. 

 17 Pronounced carbuncly. 



