Читать книгу The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers - Various - Страница 267

The toes of the climbing birds are arranged opposite each other in pairs; one of the back toes is, in many of these birds, so flexible that it can be easily turned forward. The claws are long, strong, and hooked, thus these birds can easily hold on firmly, even in a perpendicular position. Most of them frequent the woods, and live upon insects and fruit.

Cuckoo (Caculus canorus) is as large as a pigeon. It has a gently-curved, deeply-cleft beak, long, [212] pointed wings, and wedge-shaped, pointed tail. The outer toe can be directed forward as well as backward. American cuckoos hatch their own eggs. The Old World cuckoos are especially marked by the habit of leaving their eggs to be hatched by other birds. The spotted cuckoo of northern Europe lays four eggs in a nest, usually that of a crow. A small South African cuckoo, size of a sparrow is brilliantly colored. Australia has the large channel billed cuckoo, with its immense beak. The road-runner or chapparal cock of the desert plateaus of western United States feeds mainly on grasshoppers. In the West Indies and adjacent states is found the Ani, with high bill, and peculiar in that several females unite in building one nest, where all co-operate in hatching their eggs.

The cuckoo, with its never-wearied song, is the joyful harbinger of spring, and is heard with delight by old and young. It lives chiefly upon hairy caterpillars; and, as it is always feeding, we can justly include the cuckoo among the useful birds.

Parrots (Psittaci) are near relatives of the cockatoos, paroquets, macaws, lories, nestors, etc. The true parrots have the upper mandible toothed, and longer than high, and a short, rounded tail. These birds combine with the beauty of their plumage a nature of great docility, and have the faculty of imitating the human voice in a degree not possessed by other birds. They are found chiefly in Africa, from whence we get the gray parrot, the best talker. South America, which is particularly rich in species, furnishes the well-known green parrot; and North America is the home of a single species, the Carolina parrot. The parrots are forest birds, and are adepts at climbing, using for that purpose both the feet and the bill. Their food consists of seeds and fruits. They make their nests in holes, and lay white eggs, as is commonly the case where the eggs are concealed.

The parrots may be called the monkeys among the birds; for, like the monkeys, they seek their food while climbing, but are awkward and clumsy when on the ground. Their imitative qualities and docility, their obstinacy and slyness, and their disagreeable voice and gregarious habits, all serve to remind us of the monkeys.

Toucan (Rhamphastus toco), a bird of the American tropics, is related to the woodpeckers and parrots. It belongs to the most curious of the animal forms, as its immense beak is treble the length of its head. The tongue is horny, slender, and brush-like; the considerable tail is hinged next the pelvis, so that it can be thrown over the back when resting and where the bill lies also during sleep. Toucans are omnivorous, but prefer fruit, live in flocks in forests, and nest in hollow trees. There are over fifty species, in size from that of a robin to a crow, and colored from green to black, variegated with red, yellow and white. The largest is two feet long, with bill eight inches long and three inches high.

Woodpecker (Picidæ) includes any of three hundred birds which have climbing feet, stiff tail feathers and which bore into trees for grubs on which they feed, though some of them are fond of fruit and other vegetable food. Most of the species have barbed and pointed tongues with which they spear the larvæ, but in some the tongue is smeared with a sticky substance, secreted by glands in the throat. There are no woodpeckers in Australia or Madagascar, but they occur in all other parts of the world. The prevailing color of the plumage is green—dark olive on the upper, pale green on the under parts; the crown and back of the head are bright crimson.

Of the numerous American species the flickers, the South American ground-flickers, which live chiefly on termites, and the great ivory-billed woodpecker may be specially noted. The last-named species, which inhabits the dense forests of the southern States, is one of the handsomest of the group, and was once called the prince of woodpeckers.

The woodpeckers lead a solitary life. Their presence is generally known by the noise they make while pecking; holding fast to a tree, they hack at it with their long, sharp beaks, so that splinters and chips fly in all directions. The woodpecker excavates a hole in the rotten tree, in order therein to build its nest.