Читать книгу Stray Feathers From a Bird Man's Desk - Austin Loomer Rand - Страница 16

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Birds get their everyday names in a variety of ways in the countries where they live; from their looks, like the snake birds and the pond scroggins; from their color, like the cardinal and the blackbird; from their behavior, like the frigate bird and the creepers and the boobies and king-birds; from what they eat, or are supposed to eat, like the antbirds and plantain eaters and bee eaters; from what they say, like the poor-will and the more-pork; from how they say it, like the warblers and the screamers; from how often they say it, like the brain-fever bird and the wideawake terns; from where they nest, like the cliff swallow and the house martin and the chimney swift; and some from their non-bird associates, like the cowbird, moose-bird, and the monkey bird.

It is the monkey birds that have taken our fancy at the moment. The forests of Africa, the jungles of Borneo, and the forests of the Philippine Islands each have a bird that associates so often with monkeys that this habit became incorporated into its local name. The birds are not at all closely related. One is a hornbill, one is a drongo shrike, and one is the fairy bluebird. The hornbill goes in parties of their own kind, but apparently the drongo, and certainly the fairy bluebird prefer the society of monkeys to that of their own kind.

The stories we have of them stress the utilitarian aspect of the association; that the monkeys as they travel about through the trees scare insects out of their hiding places and the birds, being on hand, can snap up the insects more easily than if they had to search them out for themselves.

The monkey bird in Africa, which is a hornbill, follows, along below the monkeys in the lower branches of the trees. It used to be thought this was for the fruit the monkeys dropped, but then it was found the hornbills were insectivorous. Instead of being scavengers the hornbills are using the monkeys to beat out their game for them.

Hamba Kerah, the slave of the monkeys, is what the Malays of Borneo call the racket-tailed drongo. This is from its habit of stationing itself behind a band of monkeys traveling through the forest. But Mr. Ridley, who watched them, decided it was the other way around; the monkeys, unwittingly of course, were working for the drongo, acting as beaters to drive out the insects which the bird snapped up in the air.

In the Philippines it is "the sentinel of the monkey" that is applied to the fairy bluebird. The bluebird seldom associates with its own kind, but is almost invariably associated with a band of crab-eating macaques. But here again it seems the monkeys are acting as beaters for the bird, driving out insects.

This is a sort of unconscious co-operation one finds in the bird world. One animal helps out another without being aware of it. Birds are ever ready to profit by such behavior, and when it proves of enough benefit, the habit can become usual for the species, as in the cowbird-cow relationship, or indispensable as with the oxpecker-hoofed-animal association.