. The Audubon magazine . avao ! walking up with adainty, circumspect gait, and taking a flyor beetle from the hand. Among nocturnal birds of Brazil thegoat-suckers attract our attention. Assoon as it is dark, swarms of these birdssuddenly make their appearance, wheelingabout in a noiseless, ghostly manner, inchase of night-flying insects. They some-times descend and settle on a low branch,or even on the pathway close to where oneis walking, and then, squatting down ontheir heels, are difficult to distinguish fromthe surrounding soil. One kind has a longforked tail. In the day time they are con
. The Audubon magazine . avao ! walking up with adainty, circumspect gait, and taking a flyor beetle from the hand. Among nocturnal birds of Brazil thegoat-suckers attract our attention. Assoon as it is dark, swarms of these birdssuddenly make their appearance, wheelingabout in a noiseless, ghostly manner, inchase of night-flying insects. They some-times descend and settle on a low branch,or even on the pathway close to where oneis walking, and then, squatting down ontheir heels, are difficult to distinguish fromthe surrounding soil. One kind has a longforked tail. In the day time they are con-cealed in the wooded hills, where thehunter sometimes sees them crouched, andsleeping on the ground in the dense make no nest, but lay their eggs onthe bare ground. Later in the evening,the singular notes of the goat-suckers areheard, one species crying Qiiao, Qiiao,another Chuck-co-cao, and these are re-peated at intervals far into the night in themost monotonous manner. G. B. G. BIRDS OF THE PRIMEVAL AS I said before, there were two very dif-ferent types of bird in those days, thedivers and the flyers, and of course you wantto knowtheirnames,but asProfessor Marsh, their godfather, gavethem the most learned names hecould think of, they are ratherhard to remember. The diversare called Hesperoniis, and thehigh-flyers Icthyoniis, and, if youknow Greek, you will easily guesswhat the names mean. You seethey are both called ornis, andoriiis simply means a bird; hespermeans western, and icthy meanslike a fish, so Hesperoniis meansthe bird of the west; but to en-able you to understand why theycalled the other Ictkyomis, it must beexplained that it was not because itcaught fish, but because it had backbones like a fish. If you have everbroken a fishs backbone you will havenoticed that it is made of a lot of smallbones, each of which is shaped like a cupat both ends, but ifyou break the back-bone of a bird or ahare, you will see thatthe several bones fitinto each oth
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbirdspe, bookyear1887
