Читать книгу Stray Feathers From a Bird Man's Desk - Austin Loomer Rand - Страница 7

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The toilet of most birds includes wetting their feathers in water and shaking the feathers and preening them with the bill. This bathing probably helps remove foreign matter from the birds' plumage and helps keep it in good condition. In addition it is probable that in summer the birds derive enjoyment from the coolness resulting from the bathing. But birds bathe in cold weather as well as warm and have been recorded doing so when the temperature of the air was only 10 or so degrees above zero.

The sparrows and robins that come about a birdbath usually hop right into the water. They squat down, fluttering their wings, and duck their heads into the water, splashing and rolling it over their backs. They may become quite drenched. Then they fly to some perch to sit and preen and dry their soaked feathers.

But some birds take shower baths. During a shower in late summer I have seen marsh hawks sitting in the rain with wings spread, apparently enjoying the wetting the shower gives them, and a buzzard has been recorded as deliberately flying to an open perch in a rainstorm and sitting there with its wings spread and sometimes shaking them until the shower was over, when it flew to a sheltered place.

SPRINKLERS A BOON The artificial showers of lawn sprinklers provide an opportunity for birds about our gardens to take a shower bath in fine weather. A robin or a flicker may hop into the shower and squat there and indulge in bathing antics on the wet grass. Hummingbirds have been seen to fly into the dense spray of a lawn sprinkler and hover there for a moment, gradually assuming a vertical position and spreading the tail, then slowly settling to the ground, and finally "sitting" on the grass, body erect and tail spread out fanwise, the wings continuing to vibrate slowly. In a few moments the bird may rise into the air and repeat the whole performance.

In wet tropical forest it is probable that many of the treetop birds bathe in the water that collects on the surface of the leaves, pushing their way through clusters of wet leaves and over wet surfaces of others until they are as wet as if they had actually been bathing in water. This is not restricted to tropical birds, for even in our latitudes towhees have been recorded as bathing thus, and thrushes and flickers have been seen to rub themselves over the wet grass and then go through the actions of bathing followed by preening.

BATHING WHILE FLYING Watching swifts or swallows coursing low over the surface of a lake and occasionally touching it leaves one with the impression sometimes that the birds are bathing rather than picking up insect food or drinking. With some other birds the habit of bathing from the wing is more definite. Sometimes drongo shrikes that are sitting up on a perch near the edge of a pool will fly out over the water, drop directly into it with a little splash, and then rise and fly back to their perch, where they either repeat the performance or sit and preen their feathers.

POST-PRANDIAL ABLUTIONS Ospreys have been recorded as bathing while on the wing in a rather striking manner. They have been seen flying along just above the surface of the water, then descending into it, adopting a sort of vertical American-eagle attitude while flapping the wings, then rising a little, flying on, and repeating the process. It has been suggested that the osprey is washing its feet in this manner after finishing its meal. One observer makes this still more definite. He says that the osprey finishes its meal of fish on a perch in a tree and then flies low over the lake. Dropping both its legs, the osprey drags them through the water, flapping its wings all the time. Then it immerses its beak and head into the water while still flying along, apparently washing off the scales and slime that it had gotten on itself while making its meal of fish.