Impressions of the Voices of Tropical Birds 



99 



is the forest Flycatchers, like the Wood Pewee and some of the Elainias, 

 that have the lost- soul, hollow-hearted plaints; the sun-lo\dng kinds are 

 very kings of earth in their noisy self-confidence. 



The Finches and Sparrows in general do not add much to the tropical 

 melange of bird-music. They are frequently birds of great beauty, and all 

 have some blithe little song, "finchy," and characteristic of each species. How- 

 ever, to a Sparrow falls the distinction of being the most widely distributed 

 singer we encountered in South America. It is safe to say that anywhere in the 

 Andes above two thousand feet, from the Pacific to the Orinoco slope, the 

 little Andean White-throat, Brachyspiza, will cheer the traveler with his 

 brief and pleasant piping. "It is sweet cheer, here," gives the phrase and 

 accent. It is more like an ab- 

 breviated Fox Sparrow song 

 than anything I can recall. I 

 shall always feel a personal 

 debt to its cheery optimism, 

 as it sang daily in the court 

 of the hotel in Bogota, in the 

 clammy chill of the damp days, 

 nine thousand feet above sea, 

 while I was fighting through 

 the fever contracted in the low- 

 lands. He gave my scrambled 

 and fevered brains the one 

 tangible hold I had with the 

 wonderful world outside, and it 

 recalled nearly all of our asso- 

 ciations in South America. 



Some of the roadside Finches 

 and Grassquits have curious and explosive little buzzy sounds. Volatinia, a 

 raven-black mite living along the hedge-rows, has an amusing song-habit. 

 Sitting on the top of a grass or weedstalk, he suddenly rises in bee-like flight 

 about a yard into the air: at the apex of his little spring he turns a rapid 

 somersault, with a volatile "Bzt," and drops back to his perch. The whole 

 effort takes perhaps a second! 



Most of the Tanagers, which grade insensibly into the Finches, are not 

 much when it comes to singing. However, the larger Saltators have clear, 

 whistled songs that are highly charactertisic. They are leisurely soprano songs, 

 usually heard from thickets of soft growth on the mountain-sides. One song 

 heard in the Eastern Andes that I ascribed to S. atripennis, though I could 

 never quite satisfactorily prove the singer, was as loud, pure, and wide-ranged 

 a song as I have heard. Though quite complicated, it was always identically 

 the same in form and range. Two long descending slurs, one ascending, a long 



ANDEAN WHITE-THROAT 



(Crachyspiza capensis) 



