NATURALIST'S GUIDE TO THE AMERICAS 



America. At present we know almost 

 nothing of it. Up to now gravitation 

 and tree-trunks swarming with terrible 

 ants have kept us at bay, and of the 

 tree-top life we have obtained only 

 unconnected facts and specimens. For 

 the most part my glasses showed forms 

 silhouetted in black against the bright 

 sky beyond. I could fire upward and 

 with a heavily loaded choke bore usually 

 bring down the bird I desired. Or I 

 could put my Indians to chopping down 

 some of the great trees, and after hours 

 of labor, if no interfering trees or binding 

 lianas set our work at naught, I could 

 search among the mass of broken, 

 bruised foliage, an almost hopeless 

 task, for casual specimens. And what 

 I found might often have been brushed 

 down from the mid-jungle, or have 

 been disturbed among the very leaves 

 of the ground. 



With my shot bird in my hand and 

 my black silhouettes and my scattering 

 of crushed specimens, I was very far 

 from real knowledge of tree-top life. 

 What of the tree-frogs, and butterflies 

 and birds and unknown hosts of crea- 

 tures which never voluntarily descend 

 to the ground. There awaits a rich 

 harvest for the naturalist who over- 

 comes the obstacles gravitation, ants, 

 thorns, rotten trunks and mounts to 

 the summits of the jungle trees. 

 Another year we hope to begin this 

 work, and to sit in hammocks or on 

 platforms swung aloft among the tou- 

 cans, macaws, parrots and caciques, 

 the umbrella, the calf and the bell- 

 birds whose strange distant notes or 

 whose dead bodies were merely tantaliz- 

 ing invitations to the manifold secrets 

 which intimate observation among the 

 tree-tops is certain to reveal. 



To show the stratified activities of a 

 few typical groups of jungle birds and 

 mammals, I have prepared the fol- 

 lowing rough diagram: 



Low forest (0-20 ft.} 

 Trumpeters Wrens 



Partridges 



TYPICAL GROUPS 



Ground 



Tinamou 



Antbirds 

 Manakins 



Thrushes 



Mid forest (20-70 ft.} 



Curassows Barbets 



Guans Jacamars 



Pigeons Puffbirds 



Hawks Goldbirds 



Owls Mourners 



Motmots Honey-creepers 

 Trogons 



Tree-tops (70-200 ft.} 



Parrakeets 

 Giant Caciques, 



Cotingas 

 Toucans 

 Macaws 

 Parrots 



etc. 



GROUPS FOUND TYPICALLY IN MORE THAN 

 ONE ZONE 



Ground 

 Goatsuckers . 

 Low forest (0-20 ft.} 

 Goatsuckers Hummingbirds 



Mid-forest (20-70 ft.} 



Hummingbirds Tanagers 



Flycatchers 



Tree-tops (70-200 ft.} 



Flycatchers Tanagers 



Hummingbirds 



Mammals permit a similar mode of 

 representation of altitudinal distri- 

 bution : 



Ground 



Anteaters 



Armadillos 



Tapirs 



Peccaries 



Deer 



Anteaters 

 Sloths 

 Bats 

 Coatis 



Red Howlers 



Cats 

 Dogs 

 Galictis 

 Rodents 



Low forest 

 Opossums 

 Mid-forest 



Squirrels 



Marmosets 



Kinkajous 



Tree-tops 



Beesa Monkeys 



The following mammals occur at 

 the Station: Opossums: Didelphis mar- 

 supialis, Marmosa chloe, Marmosa 



