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Bird - Lore 



in 'action.' As I left the boat for a short walk in the virgin bottom-forest I 

 heard howlers a little distance in. I knew they were small animals (our big- 

 gest male weighed seventeen pounds), and could do me no harm. Yet here 

 I confess to a greater triumph of mind over matter than I have elsewhere 

 ever been called on to effect, in order to overcome the fierce desire to be some- 

 where else. In spite of the intellectual certainty that it was perfectly safe, it 

 took all my nerve, that first time, to move up under the tree whence came that 

 courage-killing, menacing bellow. There were only four of them; an old male, 

 a female and two half-grown young; probably a family. Yet the terrible noise, 



that issued principally from 

 the bearded and swollen 

 throat of the old male, 

 seemed, really, to make the 

 atmosphere quake. As I 

 stood below, he would rush 

 down toward me, bellowing 

 outrageously, and I thought 

 it took some fortitude, at first, 

 to stand by till he retreated 

 again. The noise, as I analyzed 

 it at the time, was a deep, 

 throaty, bass roar, with some- 

 thing of the quality of grunt- 

 ing pigs, or the barking 

 bellow of a bull alligator, or 

 an Ostrich. Accompanying 

 this major sound was a weird, 

 crooning sort of wail, prob- 

 ably the contribution of the 

 female or young, or both. 

 The noise was fully as loud 

 as the full-throated roaring of lions, and that it has marvelous carrying power 

 was frequently attested when we heard it from the far side of some of the great 

 Andean valleys as we wound our tortuous way across the Central Cordillera. 

 This is of course in no sense a bird-voice, yet it is by far the most striking 

 sound in the American tropics, and I should feel that I had done the subject 

 slight justice if I did not at least try to make it recognizable to those who may 

 read these papers, and some day hear for themselves this astonishing sound. 



In bringing to a close this series of impressions, it must not be thought 

 that they cover the field of tropical bird music. They form, indeed, the 

 merest nucleus on which to build. 



RED HOWLER 



