must be fed and cared for till they can fly. So she feeds them with infant pap from her own mouth. The “crop” or bag in which the partridge or hen stores the grain she picks up is large and single; but the pigeon has two bags, one on each side of the throat, and when she is feeding her young these bags secrete a large quantity of milky fluid, which, mixing with the tender shoots she has pecked off in the spring, or with the oily seeds she has gathered for her autumn brood, makes a soft food, which she pours into the mouths of her nestlings till they fly and feed themselves.

In the pigeons, then, we are gradually rising from the ground birds,—where the father generally has many wives[101] and the young ones run as soon as they are hatched,—to the tree birds, where father and mother, taught by the helplessness of their brood, share the cares of nest building and the pleasures of love. Even the pigeons did not all at once become tree birds, for we have them in all stages now from the ground to the air. Many years ago, in the island of Mauritius, there were heavy flat-breasted pigeons, the Dodos, which lived entirely on the ground without the power to rise, so that when the Dutch settled there, bringing rats with them in their ships, the Dodos soon fell victims to the intruders, and now there is not one left. Again, in New Guinea now, there are ground pigeons which fly heavily and slowly, and only go to the trees to roost. Then come our own tame pigeons, the rock-pigeons, and the stock-dove which builds in boles in the trees; and then our wood-dove and his

Footnote 101. Partridges, quails, and some others are exceptions, and pair.

relations, with their rude nests and their mixed food of grain and grass. And among these are the wonderful long-winged passenger pigeons[102] of America, which fly in flocks of hundreds of thousands through Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, in search of nuts and seeds, breaking down the boughs of the trees by their weight where they alight, and then darkening the whole sky as they start off again in a succession of vast multitudes to another forest where beech nuts, acorns, and chestnuts are plentiful, or to the rice-grounds of Carolina, to take their fill.

And, lastly, we come to the beautiful green fruit-eating pigeons of India and the East—the feeders on nutmegs and palm-fruits and juicy berries of all kinds. These are true tree birds, difficult even to find, so like are they to the colour of the leaves; yet they still build the loose untidy nests of their kind.

Nor need we wonder at this, for fine nest building requires both strength and delicacy in the bill and feet; and the next group of birds escapes it altogether by finding or making holes in trees and banks, and lining them with moss or leaves. This group is the Climbers, which come, as it were, between the ground birds and birds of active flight, for they clamber swiftly up the trunks and over the branches of trees in search of fruits and insects, seldom going down to the ground, but flitting from tree to tree to find fresh hunting grounds.

Fig. 43.

The great green Woodpecker.[103]

What is that green object, about as large as a small squirrel, which we see mounting the trunk of one of the elm trees, as we lie resting on the moss

Footnote 102. Columba migratoria.

Footnote 103. Gecinus viridis.

in some quiet wood? There it goes, dodging now to this side, now to that, with its head well lifted and its stiff tail bent against the trunk. It is the green woodpecker at his work. His long large feet, with toes divided in pairs, two in front and two behind, take firm hold of the tree with their sharp claws; his breast, which is flatter than that of most birds, lies close against the bark, as he mounts by a number of rapid jumps, which are made by pressing his strangely stiff horny tail against the trunk, while he hops forward with both feet, making a slight

rustling noise, and moving so fast that it is difficult to see how he does it.

Now he pauses; it is to try a suspicious place in the bark, and tapping it with his beak he finds that it gives a hollow sound. This tells him at once that it is rotten, and there is an insect within; and pecking, a hole with rapid blows of his chisel-like bill, he inserts his narrow bill, and darts a long gluey tongue, with barbed tip, into the dark passage, bringing out the intruder, which is swallowed in a moment. A strange tongue this is of the woodpecker, for it has two long bony branches at its roots, and each one is like a bow bent under and round the back of the bird’s head, and as these bows are tightened or slackened by the slender muscles the tongue is drawn in, or thrust out to an extraordinary length. Moreover, it has at its tip a horny covering beset with tiny barbs, and every time it goes back to the mouth these are bathed in gluey slime to catch the next insect it may meet. Nor is the woodpecker obliged always to drill for his food. The tiny ants, as they wander up and down the trees, the beetles and bees settling on the branches—all may fear this gluey weapon, for all alike disappear within the long thin beak.

And now, perhaps, our friend has flown to another tree, and is some way up it. Where is he gone? Climb up and look, and you will find a small round hole, small outside but not inside, for the woodpecker has hollowed out the soft rotten wood, and within, if it be early summer, the mother is still sitting upon five or seven pure white eggs, out of which the naked little ones will soon creep. He is a clever fellow the woodpecker, but he is by no means the chief or most conspicuous of the climbers, for in this group we have some of the most gaudy and remarkable of birds. The brilliantly-coloured Barbets, the gaudy-headed Toucans, with their clumsy bills and long barbed tongues, and the gorgeously-tinted Parrots and Parroquets, with their soft fleshy tongues so well adapted for speech, are all climbers, with toes divided two and two, and they wander about the trees of South America and the East, feeding on fruits and seeds.

Where in any other part of the animal kingdom can we find so many brilliant colours crowded together as in the plumage of birds, and especially in birds of tropical countries? The large land animals cannot afford to wear such bright coats lest they should attract their enemies, nor can even birds often put on gay plumage in our northern climates, where the trees are bare for half the year. But in warm sunny latitudes, where the trees are always green and the foliage thick and heavy, and where brilliant fruits and flowers often peep out among the leaves, the gaily-coloured birds can wander in comparative safety, and even the gaudy parrots are not easily detected as they clamber from bough to bough, using not their tail like the woodpecker, but their beak, as a third foot to hold on by as they climb.

None of these birds build nests; indeed, they could hardly do so with their clumsy beaks and thick heavy feet; they either, like the ground parrots, put together a few leaves in hollows of the earth or in ants’ nests; or, like the fruit-eating parrots and toucans, they lay their eggs in tree-holes, where the bright-coloured mother is safely hidden till she is set at liberty again. Even the cuckoos which, though they are climbers, have taken much more to the wing than their associates, sometimes avoid the trouble of nest building by laying their eggs in the nests of other birds, as our own spring visitor always does. Some of them, however, in America and elsewhere, have contracted better habits, and build very respectable nests of their own.

Fig. 44.

The Kingfisher.[104]

Indeed, we shall now soon begin to make progress in nest building, for the next group of birds, which

Footnote 104. Alcedo ispida.

dart at their food with wide-gaping mouth and seize it on the wing, have among them many clever little architects. It is true our English kingfisher builds in holes on the river bank, lining her nest with fishes’ bones, and the Nightjar (wrongly called the goatsucker), with her wide-gaping mouth, lays her egg on the ground. But both these are lowly Darters, for the kingfisher sits on a bough close above the water, and pounces down upon the fish or water-insects; and the lonely nightjar, with her strange wailing cry, flits among the bushes in the twilight, or often even creeps after her prey.

Neither of these birds can compare in flight with the Swifts, as they dart upon the wing from some high pinnacle to collect a mouthful of insects, and come back to eat them, nor to the lovely little Humming Birds of America, which poise themselves so deftly on the wing, while their slender bill searches the long-tubed flowers for insects or seizes these as they pass. These living jewels of nature build beautiful and delicate nests of leaves and grass and spiders’ webs interwoven like fairy cradles; while the swift makes a far stronger home of hair and feathers, grass and moss, glueing them together with saliva[105] from his mouth, and fastening them under the eaves or on the top of some tall waterspout. It is easy to see why the swift chooses such lofty spots, for his slender weak toes are ill-fitted for standing on the ground, and he rises with great difficulty when once he has alighted there, but from a height he can drop easily on to the wing, and skim the air for his food.

Footnote 105. The Indian and Chinese edible-nest Swiftlets (Collocalia), make their nests entirely of this saliva, and they are eaten by the natives.

Now the swift, which visits us only in summer to build his nest, when insects are plentiful, and spends the rest of his time in Africa, is a type of a whole army of birds, lovely, bright, and gay, with short weak feet, long wings, and a gaping mouth surrounded by bristly hairs, which swarm in hot countries where insects are to be found all the year round. Among these are the beautiful little Bee-eaters and Rollers of the East and Africa, which revel in insect food, and sometimes visit us in the summer, coming over to the south of Spain, or even, in the case of the rollers, as far north as Sweden; while in South America the dull-coloured Puff-birds, the brilliant Jacamars with their metallic-looking feathers, the delicate little Todies, the bright green Motmots, and the lovely Humming-birds, swarm in countless numbers, hiding among the dense foliage, or darting in the bright sunshine after bee or butterfly, or other unwary insects.

* * * * *

But we must not pause too long among these smaller groups of birds, for the multitude of perching birds, which form nine-tenths of the whole bird kingdom, await us with their delicate nests and their happy family life. Ah! now we are really coming to nature’s feathered favourites, for what can be sweeter than the song of the nightingale, the skylark, or the thrush? or more touching than the fact that the young ones learn from their father the loving notes; that they, in their turn, may be able to woo and win some gentle mate to share their nests and bring up their young ones? It is for this that they have gained that wonderful singing instrument which they have deep down in their throat. For they do not produce their sounds as we do, just below the back of the mouth, but at the lower end of the windpipe, just where it divides into two branches, one going to each lung. There, where the rush of the air is strongest, is found a complicated apparatus, moved by a whole set of muscles, upon which the little fellow plays, and seems never to be exhausted, so much air has he in all parts of his body. And as the song pours through the windpipe there again he can help to give it its soft mellow tones, for while in hoarse-crying birds, like the sea birds and the waders, this tube is long and stiff, in the sweet singing birds it is short, and the bony rings composing it are thin and far apart, with soft delicate membrane between them, which can be shortened or lengthened to modulate the tones. And so we hear them in the springtime pouring forth their full tide of song to tempt a young wife to come and help them to build a nest; or, in the full pleasure of success, trilling out their delight in the warm bright sunshine, and calling on all the world to be as happy as they.

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