VOICES OF TEOPICAL BIRDS— FUEETES. 303 



unicolor is known as " clarin." Distinguished from these as 

 " jilgiiero de la tierra " are the wrens of the genus Leucolehls^ which 

 haA^e a way of singing at your very feet, hidden under the ferns and 

 low growing soft plants of earth. Theirs too, are violin tones, and, 

 though the songs are not rare, the singer is seldom seen, however 

 patiently you search or wait for him in the mosquito-ridden air of his 

 dripping haunts. It has always seemed a mystery to me how these 

 little birds of the cloud forest keep dry. They are, indeed, the only 

 dry thing you would encounter in a week's hunt, for overhead all is 

 oozing water, all the leaves are shiny wet, and underfoot is soaking, 

 rotting vegetable mold or deep muddy ooze, that frequently lets you 

 in over your boot tops. 



In the same forests that shelter the tinamou and solitaire dwell 

 the evasive and ventriloquistic wood partridges {Odontoijhoi^s) . 

 These are richly garbed in velvety, rotten-wood colors, with all the 

 minute mothlike pattern of whippoorwills. But wonderful as is 

 their coat, it is their vocal performance that gives them real distinc- 

 tion, for besides the familiar partridge clucking and pipping heard 

 only at close range and therefore seldom, they possess a loud rollick- 

 ing call that may be heard a mile or more across the forested course 

 of a mountain river. 



Once, while I was pussj^- footing along a little water trail in the 

 hope of again seeing a golden-headed trogon, I was congealed for 

 the moment by a load, explosive alarm at the end of a fallen and 

 rotting bole that lay just before me. '' Kivelry, cavalry, kivelry, 

 cavalry, pt', pt', pt', t' t' t' t," and up popped a brown velvet bird, 

 called once more and dropped, already running, on the other side 

 of the log. The call, at close range, had a roosterlike quality not 

 noticeable in the distance, and I was surprised to see that the whole 

 complicated and rapid performance was the work of one bird. 



Perhaps it is a sort of statute of limitations that makes us con- 

 stantly compare new bird songs with familiar ones at home. Per- 

 haps it is the paucity of our language that renders description almost 

 futile. But occasionally a resemblance is so striking that no alterna- 

 tive suggests itself. Sweltering in the heat and glare of the Andean 

 foothills, veins throbbing with the exertion of the climbing hunt, 

 exhaustion screaming for a let-up, and temper getting thin, some- 

 thing turns over inside one when, of a sudden, comes the cheery, old- 

 home " bobwhite " of the little crested Euj)sychortyx quail. Ap- 

 pearances would never suggest the close relationship, but this little 

 fellow, 3,000 miles from home, says " bobwhite " without a trace of 

 accent, striking a primitive chord that does queer things for the 

 moment to the inner you, caught unawares. 



