Part 28
Another subject of acknowledged curiosity is, THE HUMMING BIRD.--There are sixty species enumerated by Latham, and Gmelin has sixty-five. The birds of this genus are the smallest of all birds. These diminutive creatures subsist on the juices of flowers, which they extract, like bees, while on the wing, fluttering over their delicate repast, and making a considerable humming sound, from which they derive their designation. They are gregarious, and build their nests with great neatness and elegance, lining them with the softest materials they can possibly procure.
The red-throated humming-bird is rather more than three inches long, and is frequent in various parts of North America. Its plumage is highly splendid and varying; it extracts the nectar of flowers, particularly those of a long tube, like the convolvulus or tulip. They will suffer themselves to be approached very near, but on observing an effort to seize them, dart off with the rapidity of an arrow. A flower is frequently the subject of bitter conflict between two of these birds; they will often enter an open window, and, after a short contest, retire. They sometimes soar perpendicularly to a considerable height, with a violent scream. If a flower which they enter furnishes them with no supply, they pluck it, as it were in punishment and revenge, from its stalk. They have been kept alive in cages for several weeks, but soon perish for want of the usual food, for which no adequate substitute has yet been found. Latham, however, mentions a curious circumstance of their being preserved alive by Captain Davies for four months, by the expedient of imitating tubular flowers with paper appropriately painted, and filling the bottom of the tubes with sugar and water as often as they were emptied. They then took their nourishment in the same manner as when unconfined, and soon appeared familiarized and happy. They build on the middle of the branch of a tree, and lay two eggs in an extremely small and admirably constructed nest.
The smallest of all the species is said, when just killed, to weigh no more than twenty grains. Its total length is an inch and a quarter. It is found in the West Indies and South America, and is exceeded both in weight and magnitude by several species of bees.
We shall close this chapter with an account of THE GOLDEN EAGLE.--This bird weighs above twelve pounds, and is about three feet long, the wings, when extended, measuring seven feet four inches. The sight and sense of smelling are very acute; the head and neck are clothed with narrow, sharp-pointed feathers, of a deep brown colour, bordered with tawny; the hind part of the head is of bright rust colour. These birds are very destructive to fawns, lambs, kids, and all kinds of game, particularly in the breeding season, when they bring a vast quantity of prey to their young. Smith, in his History of Kerry, relates, that a poor man in that country got a comfortable subsistence for his family, during a summer of famine, out of an eagle's nest, by robbing the eaglets of the food the old ones brought, whose attendance he protracted beyond the natural time, by clipping the wings and retarding the flight of the former. It is very unsafe to leave infants in places where eagles frequent; there having been instances in Scotland of two being carried off by them; but, fortunately, the thefts were discovered in time, and the children were restored unhurt out of the eagles' nests. In order to extirpate these pernicious birds, there is a law in the Orkney isles, which entitles every person that kills an eagle to a hen out of every house in the parish where it was killed. Eagles seem to give the preference to the carcases of dogs and cats. People who make it their business to kill those birds, lay one of these carcases by way of bait; and then conceal themselves within gun-shot. They fire the instant the eagle alights; for she that moment looks about before she begins to prey. Yet, quick as her sight may be, her sense of hearing seems still more exquisite. If hooded crows or ravens happen to be nearer the carrion, and resort to it first, and give a single croak, the eagle instantly repairs to the spot. These eagles are remarkable for their longevity, and for sustaining a long abstinence from food. Mr. Keysler relates, that an eagle died at Vienna after a confinement of 104 years. This pre-eminent length of days is alluded to by the Psalmist, "Thy youth is renewed like the eagle's."
One of this species, which was nine years in the possession of Owen Holland, Esq. of Conway, lived thirty-two years with the gentleman who made him a present of it; but what its age was, when the latter received it from Ireland, is unknown. The same bird also furnishes us with a proof of the truth of the other remark; having once, through the neglect of servants, endured hunger for twenty-one days without any sustenance whatever.
Here it is proper to take notice of a very singular variety of the Golden Eagle, described by Mr. Bruce, in his Travels in Abyssinia; for, whether it properly belongs to this species or not, we do not find that it has been, as yet, either arranged under any other, or ranked as a different genus, (which indeed it appears to be,) by Mr. Kerr, or any other ornithologist. Mr. Bruce says, it is not only the largest of the eagle kind, but the largest bird that flies. By the natives it is vulgarly called _abon duchem_, or, father long-beard. It is not an object of any chase, nor stands in need of any stratagem to bring it within reach. Upon the highest top of mount Lamalmon, while Mr. Bruce's servants were refreshing themselves after their toilsome ascent, and enjoying the pleasure of a most delightful climate, eating their dinner in the open air, with several large dishes of boiled goat's flesh before them, this eagle suddenly made its appearance; he did not stoop rapidly from a height, but came flying slowly along the ground, and sat down close to the meat, within the ring the men had made around it. A great shout, or rather cry of distress, which they raised, made the bird stand for a minute as if to recollect himself; but while the servants ran for their lances and shields, his attention was fully fixed upon the flesh. He put his foot into the pan, where was a large piece in water nearly boiling; but feeling the smart, he withdrew it, and forsook the piece which he held. There were two large pieces, a leg and a shoulder, lying on a wooden platter: into these he struck his claws, and carried them off, skimming slowly along the ground, as he had come, till he disappeared behind a cliff. But being observed, at his departure, to look wistfully at the large piece which remained in the warm water, it was concluded that he would soon return; in expectation of which, Mr. Bruce loaded a rifle gun with ball, and sat down close to the platter by the meat. It was not many minutes before he came; and a prodigious shout was raised by the attendants, "He is coming, he is coming!" enough to have discouraged a less courageous animal. Whether he was not quite so hungry as at his first visit, or suspecting something from Mr. Bruce's appearance, he made a small turn, and sat down about ten yards from him, the pan with the meat being between them. In this situation Mr. Bruce fired, and shot him with the ball through the middle of his body, about two inches below the wing, so that he lay down upon the grass without a single flutter. Upon laying hold of his monstrous carcase, our author was not a little surprised at seeing his hands covered and tinged with yellow dust. Upon turning him upon his belly, and examining the feathers of his back, they produced a brown dust, the colour of the feathers there. The dust was not in small quantities, for, upon striking his breast, the yellow powder flew in a greater quantity than from a hair-dresser's powder-puff. The feathers of the belly and breast, which were of a gold colour, did not appear to have any thing extraordinary in their formation, but the large feathers in the shoulders and wings seemed apparently to be fine tubes, which, upon pressure, scattered the brown dust upon the finer part of the feathers. Upon the side of the wing, the ribs, or hard part of the feather, seemed to be bare, as if worn, or, in our author's opinion, were rather renewing themselves, having before failed in their function. What the reason is of this extraordinary provision of nature, Mr. Bruce does not attempt to determine. But as it is an unusual one, it is probably meant, he thinks, for a defence against the climate in favour of those birds, which live in those almost inaccessible heights of a country, doomed even in its lower parts to several months' of excessive rain.
This bird, from wing to wing, was eight feet four inches; and from the tip of his tail to the point of his beak, four feet seven inches. He was remarkably short in the legs, being only four inches from the foot to the junction of the leg with the thigh; and from that to the body six inches. The thickness of his thigh was little less than four inches; it was extremely muscular, and covered with flesh. His middle claw was about two inches and a half long, not very sharp at the point, but extremely strong. From the root of the bill to the point was three inches and a quarter, and one inch and three-quarters in breadth at the root. A forked brush of strong hair, divided at the point into two, proceeded from the cavity of his lower jaw at the beginning of his throat. His eye was remarkably small in proportion to his bulk, the aperture being scarcely half an inch. The crown of his head, and the front, where the bill and skull joined, were bald.
CHAP. XX.
CURIOSITIES RESPECTING BIRDS.--(_Continued._)
_The Cuckoo--The Cormorant--The Great Bustard--The Alarm-Bird--The Carrier, or Courier, Pigeon--The Wild Pigeon, its multiplying Power--Singular Bird, inhabiting a Volcano in Guadaloupe--Curious Adventure of an Owl--Curious Facts in Natural History--The Chick in the Egg._
THE CUCKOO.--We shall introduce this curious bird, with the following well-known beautiful piece of poetry:--
Hail, beauteous stranger of the wood, Attendant on the spring! Now heav'n repairs thy rural seat, And woods thy welcome sing.
Soon as the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear: Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year?
Delightful visitant! with thee I hail the time of flow'rs, When heaven is fill'd with music sweet Of birds among the bow'rs.
The school-boy, wand'ring in the wood, To pull the flow'rs so gay, Starts, thy curious voice to hear, And imitates thy lay.
Soon as the pea puts on the bloom, Thou fly'st thy vocal vale, An annual guest, in other lands, Another spring to hail.
Sweet bird! thy bow'r is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year!
O could I fly, I'd fly with thee; We'd make, with social wing Our annual visit o'er the globe, Companions of the spring.
This bird is described, in natural history, as a genus of the order of Picæ. Generic character: bill smooth, somewhat bending and weak; nostrils surrounded by a small rim; tongue short and arrowed; toes, two forward and two backward; tail wedge-formed, of ten soft feathers. Gmelin enumerates fifty-five species, and Latham forty-six. The following are the most general characteristics of the Cuckoo:--
This bird is about fourteen inches long. It is found in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its food consists of insects and the larvæ of moths, but when domesticated, which it may be without much difficulty, it will eat bread, fruits, eggs, and even flesh. When fattened, it is said to be excellent for the table. It is in this country a bird of passage, appearing first about the middle of April, and cheering the vicinity of its habitation with that well-known note, with which so many exquisite ideas and feelings are associated. This note is used only by the male bird, and this is the intimation of love. It has been heard, (though very rarely,) like the song of the nightingale, in the middle of the night. About the close of June this note ceases, but the cuckoo remains in England till towards the end of September. It is imagined sometimes to continue in the country for the whole of the year, as it has occasionally been seen here so early as February. Cuckoos are supposed to winter in Africa, as they are seen twice a year in the island of Malta.
With the history of these birds have been blended much fable and superstition; their manners, however, are unquestionably very curious; and fable in this, as in many other cases, is in a great degree connected with fact. It is almost universally agreed by naturalists, that the cuckoo does not hatch its own eggs, but deposits them in the nest of some other bird. Buffon mentions the names of twenty birds, or more, on which the cuckoo passes this fraud. Those most frequently duped by it, however, in this manner, are the yellow-hammer, the water-wagtail, and the hedge-sparrow; and of these three, by far more than the other two, the hedge-sparrow. The most minute and attentive examiner into this extraordinary peculiarity, is Mr. Edward Jenner; from whose observations on this interesting subject we shall select a few of the most important.
He states, that the hedge-sparrow is generally four or five days in completing her number of eggs, during which time the cuckoo finds an opportunity of introducing one of its own into the nest, leaving the future management of it to the hedge-sparrow; and that, though it frequently occurs that the latter is much discomposed by this intrusion, and several of the eggs are injured by her, and obliged to be removed from the nest, yet the egg of the cuckoo is never of this number. When the usual time of incubation is completed, and the young sparrows and cuckoo are disengaged from the eggs, the former are ejected from the nest, and the stranger obtains exclusive possession. A nest, built in a situation extremely convenient for minute observation, fell under the particular examination of this gentleman, and was found on the first day to contain a cuckoo's and three hedge-sparrows' eggs. On the day following, he observed a young cuckoo and a hedge-sparrow, and as he could distinctly perceive every thing passing, he was resolved to watch the events which might take place. He soon, with extreme surprise, saw the young cuckoo, hatched only the day before, exerting itself with its rump and wings to take the young sparrow on its back, which it actually accomplished, and then climbed backwards with its burden to the verge of the nest, from which, with a sudden jerk, it clearly threw off its load; after which it dropped back into the nest, having first, however, felt about with the extremities of its wings, as if to ascertain whether the clearance were completely effected. Several eggs were afterwards put in to the young usurper, which were all similarly disposed of.--He observes, that in another instance, two cuckoos and a hedge-sparrow were hatched in the same nest, and one hedge-sparrow's egg remained unhatched. Within a few hours, a conflict began between the two cuckoos for the possession of the nest, which was conducted with extreme spirit and vigour, and in which each appeared occasionally to have the advantage, lifting its adversary to the very brink of the nest, and then, from exhaustion of strength, sinking with it again to the bottom. These vicissitudes of success were repeated and reiterated; but towards the close of the following day, the contest was decided by one of them, which was rather the larger of the two, completely expelling his rival; after which, the egg and the young hedge-sparrow were dislodged with extreme facility. The infant conqueror was brought up by the step-mother with the most assiduous affection. The sagacity of the female cuckoo appears not inconsiderable, in her introducing her egg into the nests of birds whose young are inferior in size and strength to the young cuckoo, and which the latter is consequently able to exclude without difficulty from its usurped dominions.
We shall now call the reader's attention to THE CORMORANT.--This bird, which is nearly as large as a goose, is found in many places both of the old and the new world; it is to be met with in the northern parts of this island, and one of them, not very long since, was shot while perched on the castle of Carlisle. These birds are shy and crafty, but frequently eat to so great an excess, as to induce a species of lethargy, in which they are caught by nets thrown over them without their making an effort to escape. They are trained by the Chinese to fish for them. By a ring placed round their necks, they are prevented from swallowing what they take, and, when their pouches are filled, they unload them, and at the command of their owners, renew their divings. Two will sometimes be seen combining their efforts to secure a fish too large for the management of one only. When their work is finished to the employer's satisfaction, the birds have a full allotment of the spoil, for their reward and encouragement. In Macao, also, these birds are thus domesticated, taking extreme delight in the exercise, and constituting a source of very considerable profit to their owners. They were formerly trained, and used in the same manner in England; and Charles I. had an officer of his household, called master of the cormorants.
The next curiosity among birds which we shall introduce, is, THE GREAT BUSTARD.--This bird is found in the plains of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but it has never been observed in the New Continent. In England, it is occasionally met with on Salisbury Plain, and on the wolds of Yorkshire, and formerly it was not uncommonly seen in flocks of forty or fifty. It is the largest of British land birds, weighing often twenty-five or thirty pounds. It runs with great rapidity, so as to escape the pursuit of common dogs, but falls speedily a victim to the greyhound, which often overtakes it before it has power to commence its flight, the preparation for which, in this bird, is slow and laborious. The female lays her eggs on the bare ground, never more than two in number, in a hole scratched by her for the purpose, and if these are touched or soiled during her occasional absence, she immediately abandons them. The male is distinguished by a large pouch, beginning under the tongue, and reaching to the breast, capable of holding, according to Linnæus, seven quarts of water. This is sometimes useful to the female during incubation, and to the young before they quit their nest; and it has been observed to be eminently advantageous to the male bird himself, who, on being attacked by birds of prey, has often discomfited his enemies by the sudden and violent discharge of water upon them. These birds are solitary and shy, and feed principally upon grasses, worms, and grain. They were formerly much hunted with dogs, and considered as supplying no uninteresting diversion. They swallow stones, pieces of metal, and other hard substances. Buffon states, that one was opened by the academicians of France, which contained in its stomach ninety doubloons, and various stones, all highly smoothed by the attrition of the stomach.
The following deserves to be ranked among the curiosities of the feathered tribe; THE ALARM-BIRD.--Near the Coppermine River, which falls into Hudson's Bay, live a tribe of Indians, who traverse the immense and dreary solitudes that surround them, in pursuit of deer or other game, from which they derive their only subsistence. The animals, however, taught by experience to shun the haunts of men, and instinctively led to conceal themselves in the most sequestered spots, would with difficulty be discovered, were it not for one of the winged tribe of the owl genus, called the alarm-bird.
No sooner does this bird descry man or beast, than it directs its flight towards them, and, hovering over them, forms gyrations round their head. Should two objects at once arrest its attention, it flies from one to the other alternately, with a loud screaming, resembling the crying of a child; and in this manner it will follow travellers, or attend a herd of deer, for the space of a day.
By means of this guide, whose qualities so well correspond with its name, the Copper Indians are apprised of the approach of strangers, or directed to the herds of deer and musk-oxen, which otherwise they would frequently miss. Is it to be wondered at, then, that they hold the alarm-bird in the highest veneration? It seems, indeed, to have been intended by Providence for the solace and friend of the miserable inhabitants of those wild and sterile regions; and will furnish a new evidence of that superintending care which watches over all.
The Cuculus Indicator, so celebrated in the warmer climates for detecting the treasures of the bees, in the deep recesses of the woods, within the hollow trunks of trees, has, or may be thought to have, a view and an object in its services. It feels the want of human assistance, to enable it to enjoy the fruits of its discoveries, and therefore instinctively calls for it, in hopes of being recompensed with a share of the honey, which, we are told, the natives readily allow it; but the alarm-bird appears perfectly disinterested in its labours, it answers no purpose of its own, and therefore may be considered as one of the bounties of Heaven, to a people and a country almost shut out from the participation of the common blessings of life. It confers benefits without the prospect of a reward; and, for this reason, is entitled to the greater regard.
To contemplate the various animals that are dispersed over the globe, and the various blessings and advantages of different climates, will naturally lead us to the Source and Dispenser of all; and though some parts of the works of Creation are more conspicuously beneficial, and cannot escape the most common observer, yet we may, from analogy and reason, conceive that nothing was made in vain.