A naturalist would find it difficult to keep his attention fixed on “Pan” or “Long Tom” in this narrow glade, for great iridescent blue morpho butterflies are floating about everywhere among the lights and shadows. From some tall trees a continual shower of whirling objects are falling, some white, others purple. Catching one we find it to be a narrow petaled, five parted, star-like blossom (_Petræa arborea_), weighted by a slender stem. When thrown up into the air they revolve like horizontal pin-wheels, falling slowly and forming a most remarkable rain of color. Forcing our way up the opposite slope and on through the underbrush we come out on the corduroy road half a mile from the mine. As a corduroy sapling turns and splashes the water under foot, a cloud of orange and white butterflies arises and scatters through the woods. Suddenly through the warm damp stillness there rings out a piercing, three-syllabled cry, which was to become for us the vocal spirit of the Guiana wilderness. Day after day we heard it wherever the unbroken primeval forest reigned, but never near the haunts of man. This, with the roar of the red baboon and the celestial theme of the Quadrille Bird, forms the trilogy most cherished in our memory of all the Guiana sounds. We are listening to the call of the Gold or Greenheart Bird,[115] another member of the Cotingas or Chatterers, which is as remarkable for its voice as it is lacking in brilliant colors. Loud as the call is, it is very ventriloquil and difficult to locate. When directly beneath the sound it seems to come from the tops of the highest trees, a hundred feet up, whereas in all probability the bird is not more than twenty-five feet above our heads. It sits motionless but the violence of its utterance makes the whole branch vibrate. We soon learn that to search and find the bird directly is impossible, but by letting the eyes take in as large a field as possible, the vibration from the vocal effort is easily discernible. The male Goldbird is uniformly ashy or slate-colored, slightly darker above, very Solitaire-like both in color and size. The female is distinguished by a shade of rufous on the wing-coverts and the tips of the flight feathers. With such coloring it is not strange that the bird becomes invisible amid the dark shadows of the lower branches. The natives know this bird as the _Pe-pe-yo_ from its call, and Goldbird from the fact that all pork-knockers believe it is never found far from deposits of gold; while the theory that it usually utters its call from a greenheart tree accounts for its third name.