320 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1015. 



We were kept constantly interested in the varied voices of the 

 doves and pigeons. The gentle little ground doves, hardly bigger 

 than sparrows, give a single, soft, questioning " coo," invariabl}^ Avith 

 a rising inflection. I could distinguish no material variation in their 

 calls in Florida, Yucatan, or South America, and even the rufous 

 species presented no differences appreciable to my ear. The ground 

 pigeons of the genus Geotrygon all have gentle, velvety voices which, 

 heard in the damp gloom of the cloud forest, impart something of 

 the mystery and romance of the tinamou's tremulous plaint. They 

 have the same uncanny way of gliding silently into view and melt- 

 ing away, and when, rarely, they fall into our hands, their subdued 

 but rich beauty compels an admiration that does not dim with 

 repetition. 



But not all pigeons have these soft owllike voices. Columha spe- 

 closa has a harsh, raw-voiced single " toot," audible at a considerable 

 distance. C. hogotenms^ in the eastern Andes, in addition to the 

 regular pigeon clucks and cooing, has a loud, rough call, with a 

 strong roll or " burr " in it, suggesting a " Klaxon " automobile horn. 

 The white-winged doves of MelopeUa are among the noisiest of the 

 pigeons. Indeed, a flock calling from a feeding tree, with their loud 

 rollicking " Hoo-too-coo-roooo, hoo-too-coo-roooo," reiterated inter- 

 minably, recalls a group of victory-crazed undergi'aduates " rooting" 

 for their football team. I found that I could quite closely imitate 

 this and several other pigeon calls by whistling through my hands. 



I heard only one of the big guans of the genus Crax. "What I took 

 to be the fine black curassow, at Buena Vista, sat one evening for half 

 an hour before sunset in the dense top of a great forest tree and 

 gave his exciting cry at intervals of half a minute until the sun was 

 well down and the hurrying dusk began to deepen. I cautiously 

 crept nearer and nearer and finally gazed up from directly below. 

 Here I searched until m.j neck ached, but though the cries came 

 regularly and I constantly changed my position, the bird was so well 

 hidden that I never saw him, and at last I left him there, to hurry 

 out of the deepening gloom of the forest before it should get fully 

 dark. As it was, I had to " foot feel " my way for the last part of 

 the trail, as night caught me before I reached the clearing. This 

 call is hard to describe. It was not at all " gobbly," like a turkey's 

 voice, but was a loud siren call, which the natives interpret by their 

 name for the bird " Aburria," with the r's strongl}'^ thrilled. It rolls 

 up a full octave, sustains a second, and rolls down again. I think it 

 would carry across the shadowed valleys in the still sunset forests 

 for a mile at least, and is fully as loud as any answer a strong-lunged 

 boy could yell back. 



The little guans of the genus Ortalis, the Chachalacas, have also 

 a fine sensation saved up for the eager naturalist who has not heard 



