300 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION^ 1915. 



and DoTUXcohius. In all these cases the birds sit close together, the 

 male a little above the female, and his song is usually louder and 

 more brilliant than hers. Heleodytcs hicolor gurgles a loud, clear, 

 oriole-like " Keep your feet wet." The female, 3 inches below and 

 a little to one side, parallels this advice with an evenly timed " What 

 d'you care ? " in perfect unison, usually, with the reiterated phrases 

 of her mate. Donacohius does it somewhat differently, as the female 

 only says " wank, wank, wank," while the male sits just above and 

 sings almost exactly like a cardinal, or a boy whistling loudly to his 

 dog, hui, hui, kul. If the male gives only three phrases, so with the 

 female; if, however, the male repeats his whistle a dozen times, the 

 female begins and ends in exact time with him. This curious habit 

 I verified a number of times. Still more interesting is the fact that 

 both sexes of Donacohius possess an inflatable sac of bright yellow 

 skin on the sides of the throat, which, when the bird sings, puffs 

 out to the size of a cherry, and is a very queer and conspicuous char- 

 acter. When singing, they look down, hump up the shoulders, puff 

 out the neck, and give their strange duet from the top of a marsh 

 weed or dead bush, and then, wren-like, drox^ down into hiding. 



All the Pheugopedius wrens are gifted with the most astonish- 

 ingly loud and clear whistles. A wondrous thrushy quality is 

 theirs, with an unbelievable range in the form and forte of their 

 songs. Both sexes sing, usually close together, and when one is 

 hushed in the deep silence of the fern-filled forest of the humid 

 mountains, tense for the tiniest pip of a manikin or the mouselike 

 run of an ant-thrush, it is enough to raise one's hair when right in 

 one's ear explodes a loud, astonishingly clear " bloong-wheee-rip- 

 wheeoo," rapidly repeated, frequently seconded by a less showy 

 " We'll whip you yet " of the female. 



It w^ould be hard to describe a tangible difference between the songs 

 of Pheugopedius and IlenicorJilna. Certainly there is no such dif- 

 ference in volume or range as the tiny size of the latter would lead 

 one to suppose, for the diminutive wood wrens are by no means 

 always distinguishable by their songs from their larger cousins, and 

 the variety and timbre of the notes of one genus is as endless as in 

 the other. While no description or literal sjdlabification can do 

 much to bring up an " audital image " of a bird song, my notes, 

 written only for my own recollection, have these cryptic bits as the 

 framework upon which I hook my remembrance of HenicorJdna 

 songs : " Y'ought to see Jim, Y'ought to see Jim," " But Mary won't 

 let you" (repeat four times), " Whip-wheeoo, correeoo." 



Perhaps no songs heard in the Tropics are so characteristic or 

 make such a strong impression on the mind and desire of a naturalist 

 as these romantic and mysterious wren songs. They assail the ear 



