Birds with scale-like songs are far from uncommon: in the north the Field Sparrow; in Mexico the Canyon Wren; here the Woodhewers, but this was wholly new, phrase after phrase each differing from the preceding. How I longed for a phonograph! I scrawled a staff on a bit of paper and pin-pricked the notes where they seemed to come and reproduce them here. But what a parody they are, be they whistled or played! [Music] [Music] [Music] The Necklaced Jungle Wren,[125] or Quadrille-bird as the natives know it, is a true Wren barely four inches in length, brown above, with a black collar spangled with white. The face, throat and breast are rich rufous, with the lower parts pale brown. This is the singer. The song no man may describe! A small deer sprang up at my left, and I had walked some distance in that direction when I suddenly realized that I had missed the trail, and had been following an imaginary opening through the jungle. On closer examination this proved to be a deer trail leading to a small spring of clear water. I will never forget the first thought of terror at being lost in this endless forest. In one direction a few miles away lay the bungalow; in the opposite direction one might wander for weeks without meeting even an Indian. As this thought came I espied a little scarab beetle resting in the hollow of a leaf, who, as I looked, climbed slowly to the rim, wriggled his antennæ and took to wing. What a wonderful power of scent it was which was directing him straight as a magnet, to some far distant bit of decaying flesh, and with what marvellous vision the Vulture high overhead spied me and hung for a moment watching me through a break in the foliage! How dull and inefficient seemed all my organs of sense in such a crisis as this. For a few moments I devoted myself to discovering which was north, and from which direction I had come. The cloudy sky and the sameness of all the vistas through the jungle completely foiled me, and I had to give it up and ignominiously unravel my puzzle deliberately and unromantically. I stuck my long-handled butterfly net in the ground and began to describe circles about it—widening them gradually, until on the third round I intersected the trail and went on my way. The danger of being lost is by no means an imaginary one, and even with a compass it is sometimes difficult to retrace one’s tracks. The Indians themselves have to guard against becoming confused when in a new region. Before I reached the main trail, and met the returning party, I saw a number of the exquisite White-capped Manakins,[109] clad in shining black save for their snowy caps. Their flight, unlike their white-breasted cousins which we met in Venezuela, was noiseless. They were far from silent however, twanging their little vocal chords in an apology for a song—a wheezy, grasshopper-like buzz. The females were silent, sombre little beings—dull olive green above, with a grayish cap and paler below.