Wild and strange are the voices of many of the American forest-birds. In the Peruvian woods the black Toropishu (_Cephalopterus ornatus_) makes the thicket resound with his hoarse cry, resembling the distant lowing of a bull; and in the same regions the fiery-red and black-winged Tunqui (_Rupicola Peruviana_) sends forth a note, which might readily be mistaken for the grunting of a hog, and strangely contrasts with the brilliancy of his plumage. But of all the startling cries that issue from the depths of the forest, none is more remarkable than the Goatsucker’s lamentable wail. ‘Suppose yourself in hopeless sorrow,’ says Waterton, ‘begin with a high, loud note, and pronounce ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! each note lower and lower till the last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two between every note, and you will have some idea of the mourning of the largest Goatsucker in Demerara. Four other species of goatsucker articulate some words so distinctly, that they have received their names from the sentences they utter, and absolutely bewilder the stranger on his arrival in these parts. The most common one sits down close by your door, and flies and alights three or four yards before you, as you walk along the road, crying, ‘Who are you, who-who-who-who are you?’ Another bids you, ‘Work away, work-work-work away.’ A third cries mournfully, ‘Willy come go, Willy-Willy-Willy come go.’ And high up in the country, a fourth tells you to, ‘Whip-poor-Will, whip-whip-whip-poor-Will.’ You will never persuade the negro to destroy the birds, or get the Indian to let fly his arrow at them, for they are held to be the receptacles for departed souls, who came back again to earth, unable to rest for crimes done in their days of nature, or expressly sent to haunt cruel and hardhearted masters, and retaliate injuries received from them. If the largest goatsucker chance to cry near the white man’s door, sorrow and grief will soon be inside, and they expect to see the master waste away with a slow consuming sickness. If it be heard close to the negro’s or Indian’s hut, from that night misfortune sits brooding over it, and they await the event in terrible suspense.