iBirli-Jlare 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Oroan of The Audubon Societies 



Vol. XVI January— February, 1914 No. 1 



Impressions of the Voices of Tropical Birds 



By LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES 

 Illustrated by the author 



SECOND PAPER— TINAMOUS, PARTRIDGES, AND SOLITAIRES 



IN THE tropics, as in more familiar scenes, the birdsongs of the fields are 

 frank, pastoral, and prevalent. With us, the Meadowlark, Field Sparrow, 

 Vesper, and Song Sparrows pipe often and openly, and, from May to 

 October, their notes are almost constantly in the air. But the forest birds are 

 more reluctant singers, and their rare notes are all mystery, romance, and 

 reclusive shyness. The Field Sparrow will sit on a dock-stalk and sing, looking 

 you in the eyes; the Veery will quietly fade away when your presence is 

 discovered. 



So it is, even to a more marked degree, in the tropics. In the open pastures 

 and on the bushy slopes of the Andes, one hears the shrill piping of the 'Four- 

 wing' Cuckoo (Diplopterus) , the insistent kekking of the Spurwing Plover, 

 the dry, phoebe-like fret of the Spine- tails (Synallaxis) , the lisping insect- 

 songs of Grassquits, and, from the bordering forest-edge, the leisurely whist- 

 ling of Orioles. 



But, enter the forest, and all is of another world. For a long time, perhaps, 

 as you make your way through the heavy hush of its darkened ways, no sound 

 strikes the ear but the drip of water from spongy moss-clumps on broad leaves. 

 You feel yourself to be the only animate thing in your universe. All at once, 

 perhaps for off through the forest, perhaps close behind you, you hear the 

 strangely moving whinny of a Tinamou. I think no sound I have ever heard 

 has more deeply reached into me and taken hold. Whether it is the intensity 

 of feeling that a deep, silent forest always imposes ; the velvet smoothness of the 

 wailing 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 tongue and expresses so perfectly all the 

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



