650 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



him, he takes them off admirably, and by his different gestures during the time, you 

 would conclude that he enjoys the sport. 



Wild and strange are the voices of many of the American forest-birds. In the 

 Peruvian woods the black Toropishu ( Cephalopterus ornatus) makes the thicket re- 

 sound with his hoarse cry, resembling the distant lowing of a bull ; and in the same 

 regions the fiery-red and black-winged Tunqui {Rupicola Peruviana) sends forth a 

 note, which might readily be mistaken for the grunting of a hog, and strangely con- 

 trasts with the- brilliancy of his plumage. But of all the startling cries that issue 

 from the depths of the forest, none is more remarkable than the Goatsucker's lament- 

 able wail. " Suppose yourself in hopeless sorrow," says Waterton, " begin with a 

 high loud note, and pronounce ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ! each note lower and lower till the 

 last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two between every note, and you will have 

 some idea of the mourning of the largest goatsucker in Demarara. Four other species of 

 goatsucker articulate some words so distinctly, that they have received their names from 

 the sentences they utter, and absolutely bewilder the stranger on his arrival in these parts- 

 The most common one sits down close by your door, and flies or alights three or four 

 yards before you, as you walk along the road, crying, "Who are you, who-who-who- 

 who are you? " Another bids you, " Work away, work-work-work away." A third 

 cries mournfully, '' Willy come go, Willy-Willy- Willy come go." And high up in 

 the country, a fourth tells you to, " Whip-poor-Will, whip whip-whip poor-Will." 



While the goatsucker makes the forest resound with his funereal tones, other birds 

 of the forest pour forth the sweetest notes. Dressed in a sober cinnamon brown robe, 

 with blackish olive-colored head and neck, the Organist ( Troglodytes leucophrys) en- 

 livens the solitude of the Peruvian forests. The astonished wanderer stops to listen 

 to the strain, and forgets the impending storm. The Cilgero, a no less delightful song- 

 ster, frequents the mountain regions of Cuba, and the beauty of his notes may be 

 inferred from the extravagant price of several hundred dollars, which the rich Hav- 

 anese are ready to pay for a captive bird. 



The same beauty of plumage which characterizes so many of the American forest- 

 birds, adorns, likewise, the feathered tribes of the swamp and the morass, of the river 

 and the lake. Nothing can exceed in beauty a troop of deep red Flamingos ( Phoeni- 

 copterus ruber) on the green margin of a stream. Raised on enormous stilts, and 

 with an equally disproportionate length of neck, the flamingos would be reckoned 

 among the most uncouth birds, if their splendid robe did not entitle them to rank 

 among the most beautiful. They always live in troops, and range themselves, whether 

 fishing or resting, like soldiers, in long lines. One of the number acts as sentinel, and 

 on the approach of danger gives a warning scream, like the sound of a trumpet, when, 

 instantly, the whole troop, expanding their flaming wings, rise loudly clamoring into the 

 air. These strange-formed birds build in the swamps high conical nests of mud, in 

 the shape of a hillock with a cavity at top, in which the female generally lays two 

 white eggs of the size of those of a goose, but more elongated. The rude construc- 

 tion is sufficiently high to admit of her sitting on it conveniently, or rather riding, as 

 the legs are placed on each side at full length. Their mode of feeding is no less 

 remarkable. Twisting their neck in such a manner that the upper part of their bill is 

 applied to the ground, they at the same time disturb the mud with one of their webbed 

 feet, thus raising up from the water insects and spawn, on which they chiefly subsist. 



