The lapwing, or green plover, is called the peewit, from its singular cry, which exactly resembles that word. Several stories are told of the ingenuity of this bird, such as its stamping on the ground to make the worms on which it feeds rise to the surface; and the female pretending to be wounded in order to draw sportsmen away from her nest. To attain this end she will run along the ground with one wing hanging down, as if it were broken, till she thinks she has reached a sufficient distance, when she will spread both wings and fly away.
The whooping crane of North America is a stately bird, which, when standing erect, is nearly five feet high. Its feathers are of a pure white, excepting some of those of the wings, which are black. When wounded this crane defends itself with vigour, and has been known to strike its bill through a person's hand with the strength and sharpness of a dagger. These creatures build on the ground and assemble in vast flocks; and the noise they make when they take flight has been compared to an army of men shouting all together. Mr. Nuttall informs us that once when he was descending the Mississippi in the month of December, he observed the whooping cranes in countless thousands taking their flight towards more genial climates. "The clangour of these numerous legions passing along, high in the air, seemed almost deafening; the confused cry of the vast army continued with the lengthened procession, and as the vocal call continued nearly throughout the whole night without intermission, some idea may be formed of the immensity of the numbers now assembled on their annual journey to the regions of the south."
The heron is a very elegant bird, that will stand for hours by the side of a piece of water, with one leg drawn up, watching for fish. When it flies it flaps its great wings so as to produce a very peculiar sound.
The stork is common in several countries in central and northern Europe, particularly in Holland and Poland. This bird appears to have been regarded with peculiar favour in almost all ages and countries, and wherever it is common its motions are watched with the greatest attention, and evil or good is predicted according to its movements. In Holland the storks build generally on the chimney tops, always returning to the same nest after their periodical migrations; and among the numerous stories that are told of them are two which are particularly interesting. One is of a poor stork who found the house on which he had been accustomed to build levelled with the ground, and who wandered about for several days in the most disconsolate manner, without thinking of choosing another habitation; and the other is of a female stork, who, at the conflagration of Delft, (in which town she had built her nest,) after repeated but unsuccessful attempts to carry off her young, chose rather to perish with them in the flames than to leave them to their fate, and actually suffered herself to be burnt alive. In Poland it is customary to cut the head off a Lombardy poplar and fix a cart wheel on the remains of the branches that are left, for the storks to build in; as, unless this is done in the neighbourhood of every country mansion, the country-people believe that some misfortune will befall the proprietors.
The woodcock and the snipe feed by inserting the bill deep into the earth in search of worms, which are their favourite food. The bill of the woodcock is most admirably constructed for the functions it has to perform when thus immersed in the soil; for, in addition to its great length, it possesses a nervous apparatus distributed over the greatest part of its surface, so as to give it the sense of touch in the highest perfection, and it is provided with peculiar muscles which enable it to open the tip of its bill only so as to seize anything that it may meet with in the soil. The places haunted by woodcocks and snipes are generally bored all over with the holes made by their bills.
The stilts or avocets have round, slender, pointed bills, and enormously long legs, which are so disproportioned to the size of the body, that they look as though they were walking on stilts. The history of the European stilt is little known, but that of the North American species has been described at length by Wilson. This bird builds in salt marshes which are broken into numerous pools, but are rarely overflowed by the tide during summer, and which are generally so shallow that the avocets can easily wade through them, and bore the soft mud for the eggs of insects and spawn of fish, on which they principally feed. When the females are sitting, if any person should appear, the males rise rapidly in the air, "flying with their long legs extended behind them, and keeping up a continual yelping note, which sounds like click! click!" They will then alight on the bare marsh, dropping their wings, and standing with their legs half bent and trembling, as if unable to support the weight of their bodies. "This singular manoeuvre is no doubt intended to induce a belief that they may be easily caught, and so to turn the attention of the person from the pursuit of their nest and young to themselves." It is probably from a similar manoeuvre being practised by the common plover, that these birds are sometimes called long-legged plovers.
The flamingoes are very curious birds, which associate together in flocks, feeding upon molluscous animals, aquatic insects, and the spawn of fish, which they procure out of the water by means of their lengthened necks, sometimes turning their bills upside down, to take advantage of its peculiar, and apparently inconvenient form. "They are said to be extremely shy and watchful, and to place sentinels, which, on the approach of danger, give alarm by a loud and trumpet-like cry. They also breed together in inundated marshes, raising their nests to a considerable height, by collecting the mud into a pyramidal hillock with their toes, after which they brood and hatch their eggs in what may be called a standing posture, their feet and legs being often in the water. The young are only two or three in number, and run almost as soon as excluded from the shell. They sleep standing upon one leg, with the neck folded back upon the body, and the head reclined beneath the wing. They run swiftly, but never swim from choice. The tongue of the European flamingo was much admired by ancient epicures; and Apicius, that 'deepest abyss of wastefulness,' as Pliny calls him, is supposed to have been the first to discover its exquisite flavour." The plumage of these beautiful birds is of a delicate pink but the most extraordinary part of their formation is the shape of the bill, which is as disproportioned to the neck which supports it, as that of the toucan is to its comparatively small body. This last creature, which is a native of South America, is one of the climbing-birds and nearly allied to the parrots. It has a black and scarlet plumage, and a shining black bill.
PELICAN, TOUCAN, AND FLAMINGO.
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THE WEB-FOOTED BIRDS.
The birds of this order are peculiarly adapted for swimming, their feet being generally short, and placed far behind, and their four toes being connected by membranes. They are the only birds in which the neck exceeds the legs in length, and the reason, no doubt, is, that while swimming on the surface of the water they have often to search for their food at some depth.
Some of these birds are most curiously formed, from the large size of their bodies, and shortness of their wings. The grebes, in particular, sport on the surface of the waves, seeming to slide along without any apparent effort, as though they were pursuing each other in a kind of play. On land, on the contrary, these birds are extremely awkward and helpless, and particularly when they attempt to walk, as, when they do so, and chance to fall, they sprawl in the awkwardest manner imaginable, flapping their short wings, and raising themselves with the greatest difficulty.
The guillemots, puffins, and other similar birds, which are so common on cliffs by the sea-shore, have all remarkably short wings, and some of them seem totally destitute of the faculty of flying, their wings being converted into small, oblong, flattened paddles, or fins, covered with minute scale-like feathers. Their legs are very short, and placed so far behind that they cannot support themselves on land, even in a vertical position, without resting on their tarsi, [or lower legs,] which are flattened somewhat like the foot of a quadruped. Their life is chiefly spent upon the ocean, and as they possess the faculties of swimming and diving in the highest degree of perfection, they are the most truly aquatic of all birds, and the opposite of the swallows, which are the most aerial. If any bird approaches nearly in structure and habits to a quadruped, the penguins may claim kindred with the seals, which they greatly resemble in their mode of life," going rarely on shore, and when they do, dragging themselves over the rocks in, what appears to us, a most awkward and uncomfortable manner.
The leaping gorfou (Chrysocoma saltator) is a handsome bird, about the size of a common duck, which has the upper part of the body black, and the lower white. The head is ornamented with a crest. This bird is common in the Falkland Islands; and it is said to be so stupid, like the Patagonian Penguin and other birds of this group, as to allow itself to be approached and taken without making any attempt to escape. It is remarkably expert at diving, and, as it is generally observed to leap several feet out of the water before it plunges beneath the surface, the sailors sometimes call it the hopping penguin, or jumping-jack. There are several other nearly allied birds which have the same habit of leaping out of the water, either before they dive, or when they meet with any obstacle on the surface.
The storm petrels are curious little birds, which seem incapable of diving, and seldom swim, "but are generally seen flying or gliding over the surface of the waves, mounting upon their ridges, and descending into the hollows, often so close as to seem walking on the water. Hence the name petrel, or Little Peter, bestowed upon them, in allusion to St. Peter's progress on the waves. In stormy weather they frequently fly in the wake of a ship, to shelter themselves from the wind; and on account of this habit they are held in aversion by sailors, who, imagining them to be predictive of tempests, and in league with witches, bestow on them the opprobrious appellation of 'Mother Carey's Chickens.' Their flight is rapid and buoyant; they breed in holes and crevices of the rocky coasts; and are more numerous in the antarctic than in the northern seas."
The albatross, the noddies, and all the different kinds of gulls, are nearly allied to the storm petrel. The sea-mew, or common gull, is the most abundant of these birds in England; and it is generally seen in great abundance on the banks of the Thames, both in Essex and Kent, picking up any animal matter which may have been accidentally washed on shore. When these creatures are kept in confinement they will feed for a time on bread, but they are never well long together unless they are allowed to ramble about in search of insects and earth-worms. When they are kept at any distance from the sea, they generally contrive to make their escape during the breeding-season to a cliff by the seaside, returning afterwards to their old abode; and in this manner a gull was kept in the Isle of Wight for upwards of twenty years.