ns, and assists the bird in producing its deep, loud, and lengthy
fluty note. There are three species. Another rare bird is the Uruponga,
or Campanero, in English the tolling-bell bird, found only on the
borders of Guiana. It is of the size of our jay, of a pure white color,
with a black tubercle on the upper side of the bill. "Orpheus himself
(says Waterton) would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so
novel, and romantic is the toll of the pretty, snow-white Campanero."
"The Campanero may be heard three miles! (echoes Sidney Smith). This
single little bird being more powerful than the belfry of a cathedral
ringing for a new dean! 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."[175] But the most remarkable songster of
the Amazonian forest is the Realejo, or organ-bird. Its notes are as
musical as the flageolet. It is the only songster, says Bates, which
makes any impression on the natives. Besides those are the Jacamars,
peculiar to equatorial America, stupid, but of the most beautiful
golden, bronze, and steel colors; sulky Trogons, with glossy green backs
and rose-colored breasts; long-toed Jacanas, half wader, half fowl; the
rich, velvety purple and black _Rhamphocoelus Jacapa_, having an immense
range from Archidona to Para; the gallinaceous yet arboreal Ciganas;
scarlet ibises, smaller, but more beautiful than their sacred cousins of
the Nile; stilted flamingoes, whose awkwardness is atoned for by their
brilliant red plumage; glossy black Mutums, or curassow turkeys; ghostly
storks, white egrets, ash-colored herons, black ducks, barbets,
kingfishers, sandpipers, gulls, plovers, woodpeckers, oreoles; tanagers,
essentially a South American family, and, excepting three or four
species, found only east of the Andes; wagtails, finches, thrushes,
doves, and hummers. The last, "by western Indians _living sunbeams_
named," are few, and not to be compared with the swarms in the Andean
valleys. The birds of the Amazon have no uniform time for breeding. The
majority, however, build their nests between September and New Year's,
and rarely lay more than two eggs.

[Footnote 175: Review of Waterton's _Wanderings in South America_.]

[Illustration: Brazilian Hummers.]

[Illustration: Capybara]

Amazonia, like Australia, is poor in terrestrial mammals