344 Bird - Lore 



the extravagant wealth of size, form and color in tropical vegetation offers 

 quite as much wonderment and occupation as do the birds themselves; and 

 here we have a diversion of the attention, however unconscious it may be, that 

 certainly has its effect. Added to this, there are actual variations in the accus- 

 tomed color of the foliage that repeat with greatest suggestiveness any red, 

 yellow, blue, green, orange, or other color, that may be present on a bird. 

 No Toucan's throat is yellower than the light shining through a thin leaf, and 

 when leat-forms are further complicated like those of the Dendrophilum 

 creepers, by having great holes that let through patches of the dark back- 

 ground or the blue sky, no black-patched Toucan in the foreground looks more 

 velvety than do these leaf -interstices. As for the bizarre bills, they only serve 

 to make it harder; for they bear no resemblance to bill or bird, and simply 

 merge their brilliancy with that of the whole picture they sit in. I don't know 

 how many times I have searched and searched and scrutinized, to find the 

 author of some raucous carping, only to see one of the large Toucans burst 

 away from a perch in plain sight, where he had been all the time. This has 

 happened to me so frequently that I am sure other students must have had the 

 same experience. Perched on a dead stub above the sky line. Toucans, like 

 everything else, are conspicuous in the extreme; sitting quietly within the 

 shade of the forest cover, however varied their patchwork coat, they melt 

 tantalizingly into their setting. 



The big, black Toucans of Rhamphastos are generally called by the natives 

 Dios te de or Dios te ve — ^meaning God will give to you, or God sees you. This 

 is not a confession of faith on the part of the simple native, but a free and lilting 

 transcription of the bird's call. It gives the rhythm and general shape of the 

 sound fairly well. I could analyze it a little more closely by calling it a loud, 

 hoarse whistle, with the words Tios-to-to or Tios, to, to, to. It has something of 

 the queer quality of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo's song, only, of course, it is much 

 larger and louder. R. tocard is the "Dios te de;^' but the name fairly well fits, 

 and is generally applied, to the whole group of heavy-billed Toucans. 



The only other group we encountered was Pteroglossus, the Aracari Tou- 

 cans. These are small Toucans, all joints and angles, much given to going 

 around in noisy troops, like Jays. Skilful and jerky acrobats, they are the 

 very extreme of bow-legged angularity. Curious as Jays, they jerk and perk 

 their way up into the branches of some dead tree, their great clumsy beaks 

 and thin pointed tails complementing each other at odd angles. Toucans are 

 all great tail-jerkers, and the Aracaris the most switchy of all. Their harsh 

 mobbing-cries recall some similar sounds made by Jays, but are even louder 

 and much more prolonged. Both are a great nuisance to the hunter, as they 

 follow endlessly, their curious prying screeches and squawks effectually chas- 

 ing out all the birds requiring more finesse in their approach. I should call their 

 most characteristic noise a rattling, throaty squawk. In any case, it will not 

 take a green hunter long to identify these birds, as they are restless and their 



