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He looked up and round; the birds had ceased to chirp; the parroquets were hiding behind the leaves; the monkeys were clustered motionless upon the highest twigs; only out of the far depths of the forest, the campanero gave its solemn toll, once, twice, thrice, like a great death-knell rolling down from far cathedral towers. Was it an omen? He looked up hastily at Ayacanora.
From eleven to three all nature is hushed as in a midnight silence, and scarce a note is heard, saving that of the campanero and the pi-pi-yo; it is then that, oppressed by the solar heat, the birds retire to the thickest shade and wait for the refreshing cool of evening. At sun-down the vampires, bats, and goat-suckers dart from their lonely retreat, and skim along the trees on the river’s bank.
It is another species of the cotinga the well-known campanero, or bell-bird. On its forehead rises a spiral tube nearly three inches long, which is of jet-black, dotted all over with small white feathers. Having a communication with the palate, it enables the bird to utter these loud clear sounds. When thus employed, and filled with air, it looks like a spire; when empty, it becomes pendulous.
And while I thus sat thinking, sadly enough, but not despondingly, of past and present and future, all at once on the warm, still air came the resonant, far-reaching KLING-KLANG of the campanero from some leafy summit half a league away.
It is impossible to contradict a gentleman who has been in the forests of Cayenne; but we are determined, as soon as a campanero is brought to England, to make him toll in a public place, and have the distance measured."
The greater part of them disappear after this, and probably retire far away to breed. Their nests have never been found in Demerara. The fifth species is the celebrated campanero of the Spaniards, called dara by the Indians and bell-bird by the English. He is about the size of the jay. His plumage is white as snow. On his forehead rises a spiral tube nearly three inches long.
The campanero never fails to attract the attention of the passenger: at a distance of nearly three miles you may hear this snow-white bird tolling every four or five minutes, like the distant convent bell. From six to nine in the morning the forests resound with the mingled cries and strains of the feathered race; after this they gradually die away.
The night is still made noisy with a thousand cries of bird and beast; and the stillness of the sultry noon is broken by the slow tolling of the campanero, or bell-bird, far in the deep, dark woods, like the chime of some lost convent.
From eleven to three all nature is hushed as in a midnight silence, and scarce a note is heard, saving that of the campanero and the pi-pi-yo; it is then that, oppressed by the solar heat, the birds retire to the thickest shade and wait for the refreshing cool of evening. At sundown the vampires, bats and goat-suckers dart from their lonely retreat and skim along the trees on the river's bank.
Love-birds, nestling shoulder to shoulder, with their heads tucked under their wings and all their feathers puffed out, so that they looked like globes of malachite; English bullfinches, with ashen-colored backs, in which their black heads were buried, and corselets of a rosy down; Java sparrows, fat and sleek and cleanly; troupials, so glossy and splendid in plumage that they looked as if they were dressed in the celebrated armor of the Black Prince, which was jet, richly damascened with gold; a cock of the rock, gleaming, a ball of tawny fire, like a setting sun; the Campanero of Brazil, white as snow, with his dilatable tolling-tube hanging from his head, placid and silent; these, with a humbler crowd of linnets, canaries, robins, mocking-birds, and phoebes, slumbered calmly in their little cages, that were hung so thickly on the wall as not to leave an inch of it visible.
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