IMPRESSIONS OF THE VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS. 



By Louis Agassiz Fuertes.' 



[With IG plates.] 

 I. THE WRENS. 



Roughly speaking, wrens' songs improve in direct ratio with the 

 humidity and darkness of their haunts. This, at least, is the vivid 

 impression one gets from a field acquaintance with the tropical 

 genera, Ileleodytes^ Donacohius^ Thryothorus^ Henicorhina, and 

 Pheugopediu8. 



So far as I have been able to discover, all the cactus wrens except 

 Heleodytes hicolor (which also differs in several other respects), are 

 possessed of only a harsh, vigorous, and impertinent scold — a sort 

 of angry, chattering noise, more or less closely imitated by pressing 

 the tongue against the roof of the mouth and forcing the air out of 

 a small opening behind the back teeth. All the speckle-breasted 

 cactus wrens species have this note, and, so far as I know, no other 

 that approaches a song, much less a wren song. Our own south- 

 western species simply repeats a lazy, cross m^% ^-^^-^'^ ^.^o^,^,^ while the 

 Mexican bird, Heleodytes zonatus^ seems to try to yell "brak-a-co-ax," 

 rapidly repeated, but still in the unmistakable cactus wren burr. If 

 song is of any value as a philogenetic character, Heleodytes hicolor 

 certainly deserves to be lifted out of the prying and ill-natured group 

 it now graces, and set down somewhere near the big wren-thrashers 

 of the genus Honacohius^ for it shares with them a loud, liquid song, 

 which is not given by the male alone, but by both sexes at the same 

 time. 



This countersinging by the female, so far as I am aware, is not 

 generally known among birds, but it is certainly practiced by this 

 species, as well as by all forms I know of Plicugopedms^ Henicorhina^ 



1 Reprinted by permission from Bird-Lore, vol. 15, no. 0, vol. IG, nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6. 



2 Illustrated by the author. 



3 Donacohius is a wren-like thrasher or thrasher-like wren which is usually placed in 

 the family Mimida\ 



299 



