File:Bird lore (1914) (14753458274).jpg

Identifier: birdlore161914nati (find matches)
Title: Bird lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Committee of the Audubon Societies of America National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals National Audubon Society
Subjects: Birds Birds Ornithology
Publisher: New York City : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Suddenly, without the slightest warning, as the entire flock tooksimultaneous alarm, the innocent air would be rent with the hellish screechingof two hundred fiendish birds, and gorgeous with the flashing scarlet and blueand gold of noisy wings, as these, capricious and thrilling birds would leavefor another part of the forest. The tree would literally explode Parrots! After some experience with them, we came to distinguish the three MexicanAmazonas by their cries, when they were too far away to tell by sight. A.oratrix, the Double Yellow-head of fanciers, cried quite plainly Cut it out,cut it out, while A. viridiginalis called Poll-Poll-Parrot, Poll-Poll-Par-rot, and A. autumnalis, from southern Vera Cruz, had a sufficiently distinctscreech to immediately stamp it as something new, although I made no trans-scrip tion of its yell. Conures all make regular Parrot noises, though shriller and lighter thanthose of the larger kinds. But the real noise in Parrotdom is the great, gor- (421)
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MACAWS, PARROTS, AND PARRAKEETS(422) Impressions of the Voices of Tropical Birds 423 geous and ear-splitting Macaw. Along the lower Magdalena River, the red-and-blue, and the blue-and-yellow Macaws were both quite common, and itis hard to say whether their greatest attack was on our eyes or our ears! Theirheavy, rasping yell was clearly audible above the churning racket of theengines, even when the birds were some distance away in the forest. We werefrequently apprised of their flights, high, high over the valley, as they passedfrom one great Andean chain to another, perhaps three thousand feet aboveus, by the penetrating, though distance-mellowed cries that filtered down tous from the scarcely discernible line. When heard near at hand, there is aheavy, hammering quality in a Macaws scream that makes it the most deaf-ening noise that I have ever heard from a bird, while their fiery beauty affordsthe greatest sensation a naturahst gets in their country. Not only are theirexposed surfac

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