. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. 266 THE BOHEMIAN WAX-WING, OR WAXEN CHATTERER. gardens I'ound by tliousands, in quest of the berries of a tree, which I believe is the mountain ash, having been driven south, as I suppose, either on account of the cold or in search of food. Some of the tloeks contained several thousands, but are wow much diminislied in num- bers, on account of some having gone southwards, and others been killed. They make a great noise when sitting together, which they do in great numbers, making a tree
. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. 266 THE BOHEMIAN WAX-WING, OR WAXEN CHATTERER. gardens I'ound by tliousands, in quest of the berries of a tree, which I believe is the mountain ash, having been driven south, as I suppose, either on account of the cold or in search of food. Some of the tloeks contained several thousands, but are wow much diminislied in num- bers, on account of some having gone southwards, and others been killed. They make a great noise when sitting together, which they do in great numbers, making a tree look quite black with them. On one occasion I killed twenty at one shot, at another eighteen, and at another seventeen. One of these birds I shot had the wax at the tip of the tail, as well as on the ; This curious divergence from the usual formation has been noticed in the cedar bird (an American species of the same genus), by Wilson, as will be mentioned in the account of that bird. Perhaps the waxen appendage of the tail may rather be termed a full development of the original idea, than a divergence from the usual ^t^gfe^ BOHEMIAN WAX-WING, OR WAXEN Cn\T!TS,WSR.~AmpdU garrulm. The long, flat, scarlet appendages to the wings, and, as we have seen, to the tail also, are usually confined to the secondaries and tertiaries, at whose extremities they dangle as if they had been formed separately, and fastened to the feathers as an after-thought. Indeed, they so precisely resemble red sealing-wax, that any one on seeing the bird for the first time would probably suppose that a trick had been played upon him by some one who desired to tax his credulity to a very great extent. The full number of these ajapendages is eight, four on the secondaries and the same number on the tertiaries, but they vary according to the age of the bird, the secondaries keeping their full complement, and the tertiaries having from one to four, according to age and develoj^ment. None of the
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Keywords: ., bookauthorbr, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectzoology
