Our search for a wilderness

Then came an interruption, so sudden and unrelenting that it seemed to reach to the very heart of nature. A Red “Baboon” raised his voice less than fifty yards away, and even the leaves seemed to tremble with the violence of the outburst of sound. A long, deep, rasping, vibrating roar, followed by a guttural inhalation hardly less powerful. After a dozen connected roars and inbreathings the sound descended to a slow crescendo, almost died away and then broke out with renewed force.

We crept swiftly toward the sound, treading as softly as possible and soon, in a high bulletwood, we saw three of the big red monkeys. The male passed on out of sight, and the second, a medium-sized animal, followed. The third was a mother with her baby clinging tightly to her back. She climbed slowly, showing her rich light golden red fur and beard, while the arms and legs of her dark-furred baby were revealed as lines of darker color around her body.

Twenty minutes later we stalked another roaring male, and found four in this troop. We saw two of the females giving voice with the leader, shrill falsettos which became audible only during the less deafening inspiration.

We tried to think of a simile for the voice of this monkey and could only recur to that which always came to mind—the roar of wind, ushering in a cyclone or terrific gale. And yet there was ever present to the ear the feeling of something living—as if mingled with the elemental roar was the howl of a male jaguar. No sound ever affected us quite as this; seeming always to prestige some unnamed danger. While it lasted, the sense of peace which had been inspired by the calmness and silence of the jungle gave place to a hidden portent of evil. Yet we loved it, and the savage delight which we took in this and other wilderness sounds made our pulses leap.

THE DROWNED FOREST.

At the engine house a ten foot dam had been thrown across the Hoorie Creek bed, and the apparently slight cause had brought about wide reaching effects; this slight raising of the water throwing back the creek in many directions. One could hardly call it a lake as there was no wide body of water, and yet it had a shore line of more than ten miles, reaching out a long finger-like extension up every side valley. The original creek was only a few feet wide and the jungle grew down to the very bank. So now the trees were deep under water.

All which were below the new level were dead, standing like an array of tall bare ghosts compared to the luxuriant forest all about. When on a rise of ground, one could trace the course of the lake by the lines of naked branches. And when steering one’s canoe between the leafless trunks, the effect was most startling. The sunlight came through in a way different from any tropical forest. Every leaf had fallen, leaving the trees as bare as in a northern winter and stripping the vines and bush-ropes, but the condition of the parasites and air-plants was most interesting. All those which were truly parasitic, living on the life-sap of their hosts, were of course also dead, but the orchids and other air-plants were flourishing—showing as large tufts or sprays of light green here and there. In places the branches had a beaded effect, so numerous and yet so isolated were the epiphytes.

We drifted silently along, by the impetus of a touch of the paddle on a passing trunk. Orchids were in blossom, and ferns, mosses and lichens ran riot in orange, brown and ivory patches on the tree-trunks. Muricots and the fierce perai were abundant here, and now and then some fish broke water, throwing rings of light into the shadowy places. Spiders, ants and a host of other wingless insects were crawling on many of the trunks, made captive by the flood. Their inability to walk on the water was evident when we knocked some of them off, so they must have lived on their island trees for the last year, the time of existence of the dam. The spiders were legion in species, hardly two alike, from minute ones, shaped like nothing else under heaven, with relatively enormous hooks and thorns on their brightly colored abdomens, to giant tarantulas, who stood up and threatened us before beating a dignified retreat.

The increase of water had attracted many water-loving birds, and great Rufous Kingfishers67 swung past us, strong-winged, beautiful birds, carrying on their business of life in a virile, unhesitating way. Between the trunks flashed the White-banded Swallows118 now hovering before a trunk and snatching a spider, now dipping at full speed for a floating gnat. A hollow rattling drew our attention upward, and there, gazing intently down at us, was a splendid Woodpecker—the Guiana Ivory-bill,89 close kin to our Ivory-bill of the Florida swamps. Imagine a big Woodpecker with dark brown back, wings and tail, while the long erect crest, head, neck and breast are bright scarlet, shading into rich rufous on the under parts! Such a beauty looked down at us, and then without sign of fear dived into a hole.

The Indians, passing several times a day, with loads of cord wood in their ballyhoos or flat-bottomed boats, were familiar with the Woodpecker and asserted that the bird had no mate. It was a male and although we visited the place several times no female ever appeared. The dead tree which held the nest was called Aramaca by the Indians, and was about a foot and a half in diameter, with the entrance not less than sixty feet above the water. A living tree like it on the bank near by had obtuse entire leaves and large, brown, slightly curved pods. The trunk was rotten, especially at the water line, and as it could not have remained standing much longer, we decided to investigate the home of this little-known bird.

We hailed the first Indians who appeared and set them to work felling the tree. The Woodpecker flew out at the first stroke of the axe, and remained close by, showing little fear or anxiety. We landed and the Indians made the trunk fall in our direction. It struck the water with a terrific splash, breaking into several lengths, and finally coming to rest with the hole upward. Running out along the floating log we found that the nest contained a single bird, with no trace of addled eggs or other young. The opening was a circle, four inches in diameter, and the cavity fourteen inches deep. The young bird was about five days old, featherless and downless, but the sprouting feather tracts were very distinct.

On the edge of the branches of the lower mandible, about three-quarters of the way to their base, were two round, white knobs or warts, and a large white patch like an abnormally large egg-tooth was at the tip of each mandible. These structures were undoubtedly direction marks for aiding the parent in finding the mouth of the young bird in the darkness of the nest chamber. When the mouth was open they formed the four corners, with the throat cavity in the centre.

A most remarkable collection of creatures gathered on the upper side of their wrecked tree, tenants of the bark and wood for the last year. Two small green-headed lizards made flying leaps and escaped ashore. But marooned for life were several species of bark beetles (Nyctobates giganteus and Paxillus leachii), a huge boring beetle, and spiders galore. We noticed a slight disturbance among the bits of floating bark and pith, and scooped up a most wonderful creature—a true bug, perfectly flat, with the sides of its body drawn out into irregular flat serrations, while in color it was the very essence of lichened bark or dead leaf. Placed on a piece of wood it instantly drew in its legs and clung tightly. If it had not been frightened by the water we could have handled it a dozen times without knowing it was an insect.

A few yards away a pair of Mealy Amazon Parrots63 were shrieking and flying restlessly about a great Mora tree, but we could not discover their nest. On our way home a dainty Blue Honey Creeper136a alighted on the bow of our canoe; rich deep blue except for wings, tail and throat which were black. The feet and legs were clear yellow, showing most conspicuously against the plumage.

A pair of Great Green Cassiques150 had swung their four-foot pendent nest from the tallest limb of a tree standing in the water, and we spent ten minutes watching the male court his mate. As he uttered his incoherent medley of liquid cowbell-like notes, he bent his neck, thrusting his head far downward and forward, and at the same time throwing both wings forward and around in a semicircle. As this curious action was completed, the vocal utterance came to a close and the performance was over. The early stages in the evolution of such a courtship may be observed in our common Cowbird of the north, and a further developed stage in the little Guiana Cowbird.

THE CITY OF THE CASSIQUES.

On the first day of our arrival, even before we came in sight of the clearing, we heard the cries of the splendid big Orioles or Cassiques, known all over Guiana as Bunyahs. In the creek bed below the dam, but within the radius of the clearing, stood a medium sized tree and among its branches a colony of Scarlet-backed Cassiques152 were flying back and forth from their nests.

We made a mental note of them at the time but passed on without giving them more than a glance. Later near the bungalow we occasionally saw them in small numbers associating, as we have already stated, with the Lavender Jays.161

As we wished to take a number of young Cassiques back to New York with us and to study the colony as thoroughly as we could in the space of a week’s time, we started out early one morning for the Cassiques’ tree. The long pendent nests were all seventy feet or more from the ground. Taking the rusty climbing irons from their case, we recalled vividly the last time they had been in use—a cold June day in Nova Scotia, when the nesting hole of a Three-toed Woodpecker had been the goal. How different were these tropical surroundings!

Bravely the start up the tree was made; jab and pull, jab and pull, while the straps pressed in on ankle and knee, giving that peculiar sensation that cannot be described, but which every climbing naturalist knows so well. Ten, twenty, thirty feet were scaled, and then one’s hand on the opposite side of the trunk broke through some tiny earthen tunnels, and, like many an unfortunate telegraph-line-man, struck a live wire. At least, the sensation was very much the same, only the electric shocks were here progressive, and when they had reached the elbow, they were seen to be a numerous and enthusiastically defensive horde of ants. At one end a pair of jaws gave a firm point of leverage and attachment, whereby the insect could secure a footing while operating the sting from the opposite end of his anatomy.

There have been martyrs to science as well as religion, but much as one might desire to look into those nests only forty feet above, it may be doubted if any man could have controlled his feelings and coördinated his muscles sufficiently to continue the ascent. The details of the descent were hazy; an exceedingly rough trunk seemed to shoot upward through one’s embrace until the ground was reached and the Cassiques screamed their delight.

They had seen many of the four-handed folk foiled in a similar manner, and now this new enemy, who scaled the trunk with two hands and two spurs was equally baffled by the tiny allies of the birds!

But study the colony we must, and selecting a line of soft, springy underbrush, we had an Indian drop the tree on it A cloud of screaming Cassiques followed it to earth, scattering only as we ran up and began to gather the young birds. Out of the first nest there rushed a lizard about a foot in length, brown, with head and fore-legs bright green. He scurried like a streak of light across the red tailings, the speed sending him up on his hind legs, so that his track was bipedal.

Before we describe the condition of the colony as we found it when we reached the fallen tree, it will be interesting to record its early history as far as we know it. This was the first year of this colony of Cassiques, as last year there were none nearer the clearing than the mouth of Hoorie Creek, three and one-half miles away, where in a tree, overhanging the house of a black, a colony has been in existence for two years. Three months ago, in January, one Scarlet-backed Cassique was observed in the clearing at the mine, but it soon vanished. Within a few days, however, a number of these birds appeared, perhaps guided by the solitary scout. They set to work at once, establishing their new colony in the tree which we had cut down. So at the time we began to study this colony, it could not have been older than three months.

The tree stood alone in the centre of the tailings from the gold washing and 20 or 30 feet away from all the surrounding trees. The finely sifted sediment of the tailings had broadened out the water of the creek bed so that it flowed delta-like on both sides of the tree. With their characteristic intelligence, the Cassiques had taken advantage of this unusual condition, and were thus guarded from enemies, by the water, by the isolation from other trees and by the far more formidable stinging ants which probably for many years had had their home on the trunk of the tree. The little bird city as we found it contained 39 homes; three-quarters of which were on one branch, 70 feet from the ground, while 10 were suspended from a smaller branch, a few feet lower down. Of the 39 nests, 4 were only half finished, while 10 were empty, having been already used and deserted this season. The others may be divided as follows:

The special distribution was as follows:

The nests were typically Cassique-like, made of stout rootlets and grasses, while at the lower end was a cup-shaped lining of very fine grass and root hairs, forming a soft bedding. The nests varied from thirteen to eighteen inches in length, and all but five had an upper roosting chamber, built on above the entrance. These five were built directly beneath a group of others, and the bases of the ones above served as protecting roofs. This was a most interesting adaptation to varying conditions. Just before felling the tree we noticed in several instances that both parents shared in the work of bringing food to the young ones. Almost all of the young were uninjured by the fall of the tree. Three were thrown out of the nests and these we chloroformed in order to find what their food had been. The stomach of one was crammed with white seeds of two kinds; one nearly round and about as large as the head of a pin, while the others were longer, perhaps one-third of an inch in length. Mingled with these seeds were remains of numerous insects; beetles, grasshoppers and caterpillars. The two other birds, which were younger, and almost bare of feathers, had received chiefly animal food, as follows:—

The young birds were almost without down, the adult plumage being outlined very shortly after hatching. In a bird of only four or five days the dull orange or yellowish color of the rump feathers shows plainly. When these break through their sheaths, the color is a dull rose; becoming redder as the feathers increase in length, but not attaining the brilliant scarlet of the parent birds until the succeeding moult. When full grown, these birds measure about ten inches in length and are glossy black in color, save only for the brilliant scarlet rump. The bill is a conspicuous greenish white, while the feet are black. The eyes of the nestling are dark hazel in color, while in the old birds the iris is of a most beautiful greenish blue.

The voice of the very young birds is a shrill incessant peep! peep! when they are gaping for food, but the half-fledged youngsters utter solitary harsher notes under the same conditions. The five fully fledged birds had learned what fear was and instead of feeding, crouched down at the bottom of the artificial nest which Mr. Crandall made for them. But hunger overcame fear and before night all had taken food. We kept an Indian busy gathering a berry or fruit which looked, tasted and smelled much like a miniature tomato. The leaves of this low plant are large, deeply incised and studded above and below with numerous thorns. The plant is from three to six feet in height, is abundant in the clearing, and forms the favorite vegetable food of the Cassiques. In addition to this, the young birds had a few mealworms and ants’ eggs from our small store, and all the soft insects which our Indian could capture. After two full days of grasshopper catching, the pride of the noble red-man began to feel itself injured, and additional inducements in the way of tobacco were needed to sustain his interest in his orthopterous pursuits.

On the following day the oldest of the young Cassiques flew feebly to a low perch and nothing could induce him to return to his fellows again. He uttered isolated call-notes, which however, at the approach of food, merged at once into the baby scream.

We had carried the young Cassiques a third of a mile to the veranda of the bungalow, where they were put out of sight and sound of their parents; yet early next morning four Cassiques had discovered their offspring and were flying back and forth close to the house carrying food in their beaks. In an hour no fewer than twenty Cassiques had collected, and on placing the young out in a low tree, the parents came at once and fed them.

One bird which we watched carefully brought masses of caterpillars which it inserted within the wide mouth of the young. Although the young birds were mixed up, five or six of the same size being placed together in one artificial nest, yet there was no question about recognition on the part of the old birds. At least there was no reckless undirected feeding; certain young were fed by certain adults.

The second day after we had taken the young birds, no Cassiques came to feed them, and we found the reason was that the entire flock had begun to found a new colony in the very nearest tree to the one we had cut down, about twenty feet away. This too was isolated and protected both by shallow water and by the vicious tunneling ants.

Some of the new nests must have been started the day before, as the roost chambers were complete and in several the top of the nest itself was finished. The rains had been rather heavy for a few days and may have influenced the early building of the shelters above the nest. To the three or four inches of nest the birds were bringing beakfuls of fibres, both sexes working energetically. We were glad to know that our wholesale destruction of the first colony site had wrought no permanent change. At the rate the birds were building, the second colony would be in a flourishing state in another two weeks.

These Red-backed Cassiques152 together with their near relatives the Yellow-backs153 are most interesting birds, and a careful study of the growth and daily routine of a colony would yield most valuable results. They seem to trust more to the presence of man as a protection against enemies than to the guardianship of wasps, but both methods are to be found. We traced these birds all the way up the Barama, and from what we could learn, none were found higher up, the colony at Hoorie Mine being the farthest outpost.

NIGHT LIFE.

Owing to our brief stay and the difficulty of exploration in this hilly and densely underwooded country, we gained little thorough knowledge of the vertebrate fauna hereabouts. The phase of tropical life which, during the week of our stay, was most striking, was the wonderful host of insects attracted by the electric lights in the evening. The bungalow contained four large rooms, two on each side of a wide central passage, extending through the house—a kind of interior veranda, open front and back. This was the dining room, where every day we feasted upon delicious dishes of peccary, tinamou, curassow and paca, or “bush-hog,” “maam,” “powie” and “labba,” as we learned to call them in the vernacular.

Here during the evening meal, after the lights were turned on, came legions of the most curious, the most beautiful winged creatures imaginable. We all turned entomologists and never tired of admiring the wonderful colors, and bizarre shapes which night after night were revealed in never-ending array. The first night Crandall sent up an excited call of “Get a vial! Get a vial!” and this became our vesper slogan. From the yard, or veranda, or room, or kitchen hut, would come the call from some of our party, “Get a vial!” and the one nearest the array of bottles in the improvised laboratory would hasten to the aid of the discoverer, who would probably be found with eyes glued to some strange creature and blindly reaching out behind for the approaching vial, in which to capture his prize.

There were few insects of very small size and many indeed were gigantic, as judged by our standards of the north. None were unpleasant and they seldom attempted suicide in soup or cocoa. They were content to flutter a moment about the electric globe and drop quietly to the white table-cloth. Praying mantises, or “rar-hosses” as our southern negroes call them, would whirr in and climb awkwardly over the bouquets of flowers, swaying from side to side and now and then reaching out for some passing insect, with a sudden unflexing of those murderous, deceptive fore-legs. One which flew on the table was a new species, which has been named Stagmomantis hoorie.[E] If exercise during meals is good for one’s digestion then we were hygienic in the extreme, for twenty times in succession we would have to go to the veranda laboratory to chloroform our captives.

The second evening, although a heavy rain was falling, a bewildering number of moths, mostly small but of exquisite patterns, dashed in between the drops. There were almost never two alike; indeed among one hundred species captured on two evenings, there were but two duplicates.

It is folly to try to describe with any exactness the beauty, even of the commonest, plainest insect, and how much more impossible to convey an accurate idea of these tropical beauties. Think of a sapling near an electric light covered with fifty or sixty exquisite moon moths (Thysania agrippina)—pale creamy white, banded and looped with lines of brown—none less than nine inches in spread of wing and many reaching an even foot across.

The hawk-moths that came to our table were all different, all beautiful; one a study in pale yellow; another variegated green with blended purples and red (Argeus labruscae) on the hinder wings. This one too bore on its eyes the long shaft of a pollen stalk from some night flowering orchid.

Then a moth would come, recalling somewhat the Promethea and Polyphemus of our childhood’s collecting, but with great transparent mirrors in the centre of the wings (Attacus [Hesperia] erycina); next, two as different as possible but which we learned later were sexes of the same species (Dirphia tarquinia)—the female, large, plain brown with a forked streak of light across the fore-wings: her mate a full third smaller with rosy hind-wings and fore-wings frosted white, save for two conspicuous circles at the fork of his white lightning.

On the third evening there were fewer moths, but many more beetles and grasshopper-like insects. Green was the predominating color among the moths this evening—from palest yellow-green to darkest bottle-green. In some the green had a border sending ray-like lines across all four wings. Yellow and white were the colors almost always present in combination with the green, the yellow being usually confined to the hinder wings. A stain of gold was sometimes laid over the green, and in one beauty the green seemed to have been spattered at hazard over a milky-white surface. This proved to be a female of a species known only from a single male (Racheolopha nivetacta) the female proving to be twice as large as her mate.

Instead of burying the insects in envelopes or mounting them in the orthodox way with the fore-wings raised unnaturally until the hind edge is at right angles to the body, we merely supported the wings, and allowed them to dry in the natural position. By doing this we usually lost sight of part of the hinder wing, but we gained the true relation of the spots and patterns on the fore-wings to those on the thorax and the result was in many instances surprising. For example, when spread, the fore-wings of one tiny moth (Pronola fraterna) showed two meaningless black spots forming each one-third of a circle. When closed naturally, these united with the black abdomen to form a perfect black circle stamped upon a mat of velvety cream color.

All words are inadequate to describe these exquisite creatures; one with the lightning flash of gold across its cloudy background; another, enscribed with Chinese hieroglyphics; a third of lavender, yellow and russet mosaics set about large transparent windows of opalescent blue.[F] One of the most exquisite was a little moth (Chrysocestis fimbriaria) spreading less than an inch, with wings of iridescent mother-of-pearl rimmed with dull golden, on which was set a score of embossed beads of the most brilliant gilt, flashing as no gem ever flashed.

If one could spend a season here studying the motions alone of these insects, it would well repay him. One moth, iridescent with a broad border of black (Eudioptis hyalinata), curled the abdomen straight up into the air, and separated its extremity into a wide-spread tuft of hairs. These radiated like the tentacles of a sea anemone, and when the whole was waved about, it looked like some strange crawling caterpillar, holding its head high above the prostrate wings of the moth.

The last evening, as if to make our departure still harder, the insects increased in number. Walking sticks five and six inches in length skimmed through the air, their bodies, legs and wings dark in color and ornamented with irregular scales and projections, until their resemblance to a jagged-barked twig was perfection. If this species were represented by thousands of individuals in its haunts, birds or four-footed enemies would soon learn to detect even such an exact counterfeit, and the protective value would be lost. But in the tropics the infinite variety is the key-note to success in protective adaptation. On the table-cloth at one time would be perfect green leaves (katydid-like orthopters), green leaves with large worm-eaten defects or spottings (some of the mantises) and many brown, lichened leaves and twigs (moths and walking sticks). Even if two of the same species appeared at once, the chances were that one would be much the larger and of an entirely different shade with a distinct individual pattern of mimic defects.

Big owl moths (Hyperchiria liberia, H. nausica, Automeria cinctistriga and others) alternated with tree-hoppers of all sizes with branched and rebranched horns rising from their thoraxes (Hemiptycha [Umbonia] spinosa and others). The prize of one evening was a grasshopper (Pterochroya ocellata) which came in on the sleeve of the coolie butler. It had alighted on the white cloth as he crossed the yard between the kitchen and the house. Its wide, jagged fore-wings met closely above the back, forming a half green, half brown leaf, complete even to the mid and side ribs. On the hind wings were what we could merely guess were either sexual ornaments or warning markings, visible only in flight. The ground color of these translucent wings was a finely mottled yellow and brown, while painted on the pleated surface were two eye-spots like those upon the feathers of a Peacock-pheasant, a dark velvety shaded portion with a delicately shaded ocellus at one edge.

The last insect captured was a tree-hopper as big as a cicada, mottled and marbled on the fore-wings, and stained scarlet on the hinder.

In Appendix C, pages 397, 398, I have added a list of a few of the moths and Orthoptera collected on the dining table at Hoorie, which have been identified.