Tropicbird

“ THE DREARY JUNGLE
Many people have the idea that a tropical forest is full of gorgeous flowers, about which brilliant butterflies are constantly flitting and birds of splendid plumage flash from tree to tree. This idea is no doubt due in a great measure to the habit of gathering together in hothouses the flowering plants of all the Tropics, though they may have come from Central America, from Africa and from Borneo or Java. It is true that there are many splendid birds, but the vegetation is so dense that you seldom, if ever, see them ”

“ The men sometimes stick the tail-feather of the Tropic-bird upright in their hair, which, as I have observed before, is often tied in a bunch upon the top of their heads: Sometimes they wear a kind of whimsical garland, made of flowers of various kinds, stuck into a piece of the rind of a plantain; or of scarlet peas, stuck with gum upon a piece of wood: And sometimes they wear a kind of wig, made of the hair of men or dogs, or perhaps of cocoa-nut strings, woven upon one thread, which is tied under their hair, so that these artificial honours of their head may hang down behind. ”

“ It took but a minute to get the large, flat-bottomed row-boat ready for the start, and we were soon gliding along, an oar’s-length from shore, scanning every tree, bush, and bunch of rushes, in search of nests, those of the Red-winged Blackbird being very plenty and placed both in bushes or rushes in about equal numbers. A pair of Kingbirds had selected as the place for their summer home, a large, low willow limb which projected over the water; a peep into the nest revealed three eggs, common, yet so beautiful in their bed of wool and feathers. ”

“ Range.--Tropical regions, breeding in the Bahamas, West Indies and the Bermudas, casual in Florida and along the South Atlantic coast.
Dull purplish.
The Tropic Birds are the most strikingly beautiful of all the sea birds; they are about 30 inches in length, of which their long slender tail takes about 20 inches. They fly with the ease and grace of a Tern, but with quicker wing beats. They feed on small fish, which they capture by darting down upon, and upon snails which they get from the beach and ledges. They build their nests in the crevices and along the ledges of the rocky cliffs. ”

“ Would that some of our young explorers could be induced to turn from the ice-fields of the Poles, and the death-swamps of the Tropics, to seek these inimitable birds in the mountains and woods of the Papuan Islands—not to shoot for our museum shelves, but to study their manners and customs, and above all to introduce them into American aviaries, that a new and absorbing chapter might be added to our Natural Histories, and the Bird of Paradise cease to be the Bird of Mystery. ”

“ In the fruit-rich woods of the tropics, especially of South America, more than half of the native birds, though representing very different families, live chiefly, and for the most part exclusively, on the fruits; a thing that would not be possible in a temperate climate, where the development of the fruits is limited to a small part of the year. The immense northern pine-woods of the Old and New Worlds have their denizens from the bird-world living exclusively upon their seeds in the cross-bills, which are quite as much tree-birds as the tropical parrots. ”

“ I had often, when in the tropics, to notice the great sagacity or instinct of the small birds in choosing places for their nests. So many animals—monkeys, wild-cats, raccoons, opossums, and tree-rats—are constantly prowling about, looking out for eggs and young birds, that, unless placed with great care, their progeny would almost certainly be destroyed. The different species of Oropendula or Orioles (Icteridae) of tropical America choose high, smooth-barked trees, standing apart from others, from which to hang their pendulous nests. ”

“ As they are full of nervous activity, and are “eminently migratory birds,” they seem to flit rather than fly through the United States as they pass northward in the spring to their breeding places, and southward in the fall to their winter homes among the luxuriant forests and plantations of the tropics. All the species are purely American, and as they fly from one extreme to the other of their migratory range they remain but a few days in any intermediate locality. Time seems to be an important matter with them. ”

“ According to one of these, nonmigratory birds swarmed over the entire Northern Hemisphere in earlier ages, the conditions of food and habitat being such as to permit them to remain in their haunts throughout the year. The entire northern area then afforded the two important avian requirements—suitable breeding conditions and a year-long food supply. This is the condition today in the Tropics, and it is noteworthy that many tropical birds are nonmigratory. ”

“ But the tropical birds,—we must look at them if we wish to know what nature can do in the way of adornment. We should go to the flats on the embouchure of the Amazon, and see the rosy spoonbills, in their delicate carnation dress, set off by the lustrous crimson of their shoulders and breast-tufts, feeding by hundreds on the green mud, or watch the gorgeous ibises, all clad in glowing scarlet with black-tipped wings, when, in serried ranks, a mile in length, like the vermillion cloud of morning, they come to their breeding-place,—a truly magnificent sight. ”

“ This habit is greatly restricted in quadrupeds by their inability to cross the sea or even to pass through the highly-cultivated valleys of such countries as Europe; but the power of flight in birds enables them to cross every kind of country, and even moderate widths of sea; and as they mostly travel at night and high in the air, their movements are difficult to observe, and are supposed to be more mysterious than they perhaps are. In the tropics birds move about to different districts according as certain fruits become ripe, certain insects abundant, or as flooded tracts dry up. ”

“ With his glossy coat and yellow beak the Blackbird is a handsomer bird than the Thrush; his food is much the same: he builds his nest in similar places; he is a great glutton when gooseberries are ripe, and his rich mellow song is highly inspiriting. But he is suspicious and wary; however hard pressed he may be by hunger, you will rarely see him hunting for food in the open field. He prefers the solitude and privacy of 'the bush'. In a furze-brake, a coppice, a wooded water-course, or a thick hedge-row, he chooses his feeding ground, and allows no sort of partnership. ”

“ In the tropics, the land of luxuriant vegetable growth, where the number and kinds of insects seem almost innumerable, the larger number of the three hundred and fifty known species are found. In the United States we are favored with the visits, during the warmer months, of but thirty-five species of these interesting and useful birds.
As we would naturally expect of birds of prey, whether hunters of insects or of higher animal life, these birds are not usually social, even with their own kind. ”

“ When we come to examine woven nests, such as the Baltimore oriole and the red-eyed vireo, as well as some other small birds, build, there is offered a great deal more to study, for how they accomplish what they do, with their only tools their feet and beak, is not wholly known. That the tropical tailor-bird should run a thread through a leaf and so bring the edges together and make a conical-shaped bag, is not so very strange. ”

“ I showed him my credentials, at which he smiled, and politely assured me that I was too well known throughout our country to need any letters. While seated in front of his tent, I heard the note of a bird new to me, and as it proceeded from a tree above our heads, I looked up and saw the first Yellow-headed Troupial alive that ever came across my own migrations. The captain thought me probably crazy, as I thought Rafinesque when he was at Henderson; for I suddenly started, shot at the bird, and killed it. ”

“ During the continuance of this weather the inhabitants of the seas between the tropicks appeard: the Tropick bird, flying fish and Medusa Porpita are animals very seldom seen out of the influence of trade winds, several others also are such as I have never before seen in so high a latitude and never before in such perfection as now except between the tropicks. ”

“ And now, to speak of those birds which we know best, I think there are none which seem to belong to us so much as these three—the thrush, the blackbird, and the robin; for they are with us all the year. The thrush begins to sing very early, before there are any leaves for him to hide himself among, while the robin's song is heard not only in autumn, but in winter when all others are silent. All these birds feed upon worms and insects, not on grain and fruit like the larks and finches and starlings; but they are very glad of berries in winter when they can get them. ”

“ First, some of our summer residents that migrate south for the winter do not stop in equatorial regions, where they might find the periods of day and night about equally divided, but push on beyond, some penetrating as far south as Patagonia. Also it might be asked: If the lengthening day is the stimulating factor, why should our summer birds wintering in the Tropics ever start northward, as in their winter quarters the variation in the length of day from winter to summer is imperceptible. ”

“ Less numerous, but still decidedly common, are flickers, red-bellied woodpeckers, mockingbirds, Florida yellow-throats, hummingbirds, ground doves, and phœbes. Day before yesterday a long procession of tree swallows straggled past me as I wandered along the bay shore, and in the same place a flock of masculine red-winged blackbirds were holding a vociferous mid-winter convention in a thicket of tall reeds. White-eyed vireos are well distributed, and sing as saucily as if the month were May instead of January. ”

“ The plumage of the tropical birds, the down on the most brilliant butterfly's wing, are not more beautiful in coloring than the hues of many Radiates, and there is no grace of motion surpassing the movements of some of them in their native element. The habit of keeping marine animals in tanks is happily growing constantly more popular, and before long the beauty of these inhabitants of the ocean will be as familiar to us as that of Birds and Insects. ”

“ Forestine flower-feeders and fruit-eaters, especially in the tropics, are almost always brightly colored. Their chromatic taste seems to get quickened in their daily search for food among the beautiful blossoms and brilliant fruits of southern woodlands. Thus the humming-birds, the sun-birds, and the brush-tongued lories, three very dissimilar groups of birds as far as descent is concerned, all alike feed upon the honey and the insects which they extract from the large tubular bells of tropical flowers; and all alike are noticeable for their intense metallic lustre or pure tones of color. ”

“ The young are beautifully barred above with black arrow-headed markings. This species has not been known to occur in the Atlantic, but is perhaps the most numerous in the Indian and Pacific oceans, in which last great value used to be attached to its tail-feathers to be worked into ornaments. [3]
That the tropic-birds form a distinct family, Phaethontidae, of the Steganopodes (the Dysporomorphae of Huxley) , was originally maintained by Brandt, and is now generally admitted, yet it cannot be denied that they differ a good deal from the other members of the group [4] ”

“ The tropics must be regarded as the real habitat of these glowing birds, though we find them spread over the greater part of the American continent; some species frequenting woods, whilst others prefer to perch nearer the ground, upon low trees or bushes. Despite the great beauty of their plumage, they are by no means favourites in the countries they inhabit, owing to the damage done by them to fields and plantations ”

“ Oceanic birds were plentiful in our wake, and gradually dropped off as we approached the tropic. On May 2 the vicinity of land was denoted by the appearance of four tropic birds (Phaeton aethereus) and a tern; and next evening, shortly before sunset, we sighted the Island of Mauritius, the Bamboo Mountain at Grand Port being the first part seen. We rapidly closed in with the land, and during the night were near enough to see the surf on the coral reefs fringing the shore, it assuming the appearance, in the bright moonshine, of a sandy beach of glittering whiteness. ”

“ Sea-birds, visible from the headlands, are common enough throughout the cold season, but after midwinter their numbers increase, until at last you may see the travellers passing by in small flocks of a dozen to a hundred or even two hundred birds, almost every day and often all day long, flock succeeding flock as if they were all keeping in a line—puffins, razorbills, guillemots—flying low on rapidly-beating wings, their bodies showing black and white just above the rough surface of the sea. ”

“ If he sees a flock of bobolinks or of red-winged blackbirds, he thinks of the Southern rice fields, where myriads of both species—“rice-birds,” one as much as the other—will be shot without mercy. A sky full of swallows calls up a picture of thousands lying dead at once, in Florida or elsewhere, after a winter storm. A September humming-bird leaves him wondering over its approaching flight to Central America or to Cuba. Will the tiny thing ever accomplish that amazing passage and find its way home again to New England? ”