302 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION^ 1915. 



intensity of feeling that a deep, silent forest always imposes; tlie 

 velvet smoothness of the Availing call; the dramatic crescendo and 

 diminuendo that exactly parallels its minor cadence up and down a 

 small scale ; something, perhaps the combination of all these, makes 

 one feel as if he had been caught with his soul naked in his hands, 

 when, in the midst of his subdued and chastened revery, this spirit 

 voice takes the words from his tongiie and expresses so perfectly all 

 the mystery, romance, and tragedy that the struggling, parasite- 

 ridden forest diffuses through its damp shade. No vocal expression 

 could more wonderfully convey this intangible, subduing, pervasive 

 quality of silence ; a paradox, perhaps, but not out of place with this 

 bird of mystery. 



Only less appealing are those other chaste singers in the cloud 

 forest, the solitaires. It is, indeed, a strange sensation, in uncanny 

 harmony with the unexpected familiarity one always feels in a 

 Tropic forest, Avhen, thinking vaguely of thrush songs, the silver 

 note of a solitaire crystalizes the thought. There are many kinds, 

 and they have varied song types beyond most similarly unified 

 genera. The most tj'pical is simply a lovely hermit thrush song, 

 giving that effect of a private hearing so graciously done by our own 

 thrushes. For some elusive reason, it seems as if these birds always 

 sang as the shy perquisite of the favored few, and thus, perhaps, it 

 is that their songs never become common. 



Our own Townsend's solitaire has a very different melody, a blithe, 

 grosbeak warble, frequently given in larklike fiight, quite unlike 

 any of the tropical species I have heard. These are all of the chaste, 

 contemplative type, given from a perch part way up in the forest, and 

 in frequent accoUipaniment of splashing water in mossy and fern- 

 fringed ravines. BIyadestes ralloides^ of the Andes, sings almost ex- 

 actly like a hermit thrush, as does BIyadestes unicolor^ of Mexico, 

 while Myadestes soUtarius, of Jamaica, singing from the tree ferns 

 up on Blue Mountain, reminded me strongly of the varied thrush 

 heard in the dark, cold spruce flats of the Alaskan coast. What a 

 transposition ! A vibrant, steadily crescendo note, as true as a violin, 

 fading to nothing. Then another in a new key. A rich, descending- 

 broken scale followed, after a pause ; then an exceedingly high trill, 

 swelling and dying. These singers were common at about 5,000 feet, 

 and their choral chanting was an experience to be long remembered. 

 Myadestes ohscunis, of southern Mexico, has a song more spontaneous 

 and overflowing than the other tropical species ; I thought of a bob- 

 olink when I first heard it. The song began high in the scale, and 

 very loud; then through the rich progression of its bubbling 

 cadences it gradually fell in pitch and lost volume till it died out, 

 as with loss of breath. This is the "jilguero" of the natives, while 



