Impressions of the Voices of Tropical Birds 



345 



motion will soon catch the eye. I strongly suspect all the Toucans of the habit 

 and ability to slip noiselessly and rapidly away, in case their curiosity is satis- 

 fied or their fear aroused. They are capable of making long leaps from branch 

 to branch with their wings closed, like Jays and Cuckoos, only more so. What 

 with their looks, their noises, and their actions, no group of birds has more 

 amusing and interesting new sensations to offer than the Toucans. 



The family of Cuckoos has some very interesting developments in the 

 American Tropics. The little Four-wing — Diplopterus — heard in the sunny 

 river-bottoms and lower brushy slopes — such places as a Brown Thrasher 



ANI 



would affect — has perhaps the most insistent voice in his habitat. The com- 

 monest is an ascending couplet of notes a semitone apart : E, F. This is a sharp, 

 piercing whistle, that gets to be as much a part of the shimmering landscape 

 as a Hyla's notes do of a northern meadow-bog in March. Indeed, the Four- 

 wing's fuller song, which is a long, piercing note, followed after a short pause 

 by an ascending series of shorter notes, awoke a strangely familiar chord, which 

 I afterward attached to the very similar pond-toad call at home. The name 

 Four-wing arises from the curious over-development of the false-wing, or 

 thumb plumes, which in this queer little bird form a sharply defined and 

 separately distensible fan of black, which the bird displays with a curious 

 ducking motion. 



The larger brown Cuckoos of the genus Piaya, which the natives rather 

 aptly call 'squirrel birds/ from their color and the slippery way they glide 



