THE PUFF BIRDS 1725 



The dart into the air is made with wonderful celerity. Sometimes it is straight up, 

 again at various angles, and they go as far as thirty or thirty-five feet from their 

 perch. As a rule they return to the same perch after each sally, and may occupy 

 this for many minutes. As they rest they utter a singular call a loud, clear, 

 piping whistle, not unlike the call of a lost duckling. This is delivered in a variety 

 of ways. Sometimes it is given as a single whole note, but it may be repeated 

 at intervals of a second for minutes at a time. The dart into the air for an insect 

 interrupts this musical reverie only momentarily, and, on returning to their perch, 

 the plaintive calling is continued; at other times their notes are uttered more 

 rapidly, and may rise into a high, prolonged trilling. This may be ground out 

 as revolutions of sound, when the effect is most peculiar." Mr. Richmond says 

 that on the River Escondido in Nicaragua he met with the black-cheeked jacamar 

 (G. melanogenia} on three or four occasions. "It has a piercing cry resembling 

 kee-u, with the first syllable very shrill, and strongly accentuated. The bird jerks 

 its tail after the manner of a kingfisher. ' ' 



A single species (Jacamerops grandis) is the sole representative, not 



only of this genus, but likewise, of the second subfamily of the 

 Jacamar m 7 . . 



jacamars. This bird is found from British Guiana to Amazonia, and 



thence to Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama. It is a bird of large size, fully ten and 

 one-half inches in length, of the usual metallic-green color above, chestnut below, 

 with a large spot of white on the throat. It has a broader bill than any of the other 

 members of the family, and is further easily recognizable by its large size. 



THE PUFF BIRDS f 



Family BUCCONID^ 



Much resembling the Passerines in external appearance, and like them having 

 twelve tail feathers, as well as a shrike-like beak, the puff birds are nevertheless 

 true Picarians, having a bridged palate and zygodactyle feet; while the tendons 

 which serve the toes are of the same type as in woodpeckers and honey guides. 

 There is no aftershaft to any of the contour feathers, the oil gland is naked, and 

 the wing coverts rather resemble those of the Passerines in their arrangement than 

 the rest of the Picarians. Like the other members of the present order, puff birds 

 are believed to nest in holes, and to lay white eggs, but really very little is known 

 about them. Confined to South America, the puff birds have no representatives in 

 the Old World, or even in North America. Seven genera are admitted by Dr. 

 Sclater, the names of which it will be unnecessary to mention, and forty-three 

 species; the range of the family being from Honduras in Central America southward 

 over the whole of South' America, as far as Bolivia and Southern Brazil. Puff birds 

 are said to be generally woodland birds, being found singly or in pairs, and 

 are considered to be of a rather sluggish and stupid nature. Dr. Sclater says that 

 they are a "purely arboreal and forest-frequenting group of birds, seeming to pass 



