The Adventures of a Grain of Dust Part 18

That picture looks as if it had a tremendous lot of flamingoes in it, doesn't it? It has. It's quite a town, Flamingoburg is. Although flamingoes are so wary about meeting two-legged people without feathers--that is, human beings--they're very sociable among themselves and there may be a thousand, even two thousand, pair in a single flamingo city, such as Doctor Chapman studied in the Bahama Islands some years ago.

Their nests are cupped-out hollows in little towers of dried mud raised a foot or so to keep high tides from swamping them. They sc.r.a.pe up the mud with that shovel-like bill. After the conical-tower nest is made, the mud piled up and patted into shape with her bill and feet, Mother Flamingo lays one or two eggs--and then she goes to setting. You notice there's just one little chick in the nest in the lower left-hand corner of the picture, and just one egg in the nest near by.

With such a low stool to sit on you wonder what the mother bird does with her long legs. In some pictures in children's nature books of not so many years ago you'll find her represented as sitting on the nest with her legs hanging down the sides--but you see that couldn't be; the nest isn't tall enough. What she really does is to fold her legs under her body; just once, of course, at the joint. But they're so long that, even when folded, they reach out beyond her tail. While setting, the lady birds reach around with their long necks shovelling up things to eat and gossiping, more or less, with the neighbors; for the nests, you notice, are very close together. Sometimes two of them will reach across the narrow alley that separates the residence of Mrs. Flamingo Smith from Mrs. Flamingo Jones, take each other playfully by the bill and hold together for a while. Maybe this is their way of saying "Good morning,"

or "How do you do?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLAMINGO SOCIETY NOTES FROM THE ZOO

THE TOILETTE

You'd expect a lady wearing so many nice feathers to be particularly careful about her dress, wouldn't you?

A LITTLE NAP

Queer notion, sleeping on one leg like that, isn't it? But then flamingoes _are_ queer!

A TOUCH OF RHEUMATISM

Of course flamingoes don't go around like that even in zoos. This is the artist's joking way of telling that in our northern climate they are subject to rheumatism. And the keepers actually do oil their legs.]

You'd hardly think it--with those long legs of theirs--but the flamingoes swim beautifully. With their long necks drawn back--the way swans do it, you know--they are very graceful, and a flock of them floating about is one of the loveliest sights in the world. They look like a big, fleecy, pink cloud resting right on the surface of the water. You can now find only a few flamingoes in Florida, where there used to be so many; but go on south into Central and South America and there are thousands of them. They are still fairly numerous in countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In Persia they are called "red geese." And the name isn't so far wrong as you'd think. You notice that, unlike those stilt-walkers, the herons, the flamingoes have webbed feet. Like geese and ducks, also, they have those rows of tooth-like ridges on the edges of their bills. It is these "teeth" that, coming together, act as strainers.

But a queer thing about their bills, besides the funny-way they have of crooking down all of a sudden, is that the upper bill is smaller and fits down into the lower. Stranger still, the birds can raise and lower this upper bill like the cover of a coffee-pot.

They can move the under bill a little, too, but not to amount to anything; so you see there was even more to the upside-downness of that bill than there seemed to be at first. The whole arrangement looks odd to us, but it works out beautifully for the birds. When they turn their heads upside down they can stir the ooze to various depths, as required, by using the upper bill as a ploughshare and setting it at different angles.

Although they've borrowed some ideas from both the goose and the heron families, the flamingoes are so different from either they are put into a family by themselves, the _Phoenicopteridae_. This family name is from two Greek words meaning "red-winged." If you want to be formal in speaking of or to a goose you must refer to her family as the _Anserinae_ which is Latin for "geese."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE THE FLAMINGO KEEPS ITS TEETH

While teeth, like those of the Hesperornis, went out of fas.h.i.+on ages ago, the flamingoes have subst.i.tutes for teeth which answer their purposes much better. They have little h.o.r.n.y spines on their bills and on their tongues. These spines serve as fences to prevent the escape of the minute creatures which the flamingo scoops up with its bill. You notice the spines on the tongue are pointed backward toward the throat; and that's a help--to the flamingo, I mean, for once on that tongue there's no turning back.]

A LATE BIRD, BUT HE GETS THE WORM

Another of the long-nosed earth workers, as curious in his make-up as the flamingoes, is the kiwi of New Zealand. Like the flamingo, the kiwi uses his queer bill to get his living out of the soil. You've heard the saying "it's the early bird that gets the worm"; but while this is true of most birds it doesn't apply to the kiwis. Although they live on worms, as does Mr. Early Bird of the proverb, they do their feeding by night.

And such a funny thing for a bird to do, the kiwis go about with their noses to the ground like a dog smelling after a rat. The reason they do this is that their nostrils are situated, not next to their heads, as in most birds, but at the end of the bill--and on purpose; for they locate their suppers, the worms in the earth, by the sense of smell, although most birds have a very poor sense of smell. Just after sunset, you'll see the kiwis moving about softly (as if they were afraid of scaring away the worms!), and with the tips of their bills against the ground.

"Sniff! Sniff!" (You actually can hear them sniff.)

There, he's found one! His bill is not only long, but bends rather easily and that's why, perhaps, he's able to follow up so closely the hints he gets from his nose as to the location of worms, for he usually brings the worm out whole, and not all pulled apart as the robins do it sometimes. He works in soft earth, where most worms are found, and generally drives his bill in up to his forehead. If all goes well he pulls it right out with the worm at the end; but if there is any likelihood of an accident, the kiwi gently moves his head and neck to and fro until he has the soil loosened up and so clears the way. Once the worm is fairly out of the ground, he throws up his head with a jerk and swallows it whole.

Because they roam about so much at night, the kiwis sleep much of the day. You'll find them in thickets or in among the forested hills, where they make their homes. Sometimes, however, you'll see one standing, leaning on his long bill, like a street-idler propping himself up with his cane. If you disturb him, he yawns, as if to say:

"Oh, these bores! Why can't they let a fellow alone?"

But don't you go too far and annoy him or he'll get real peevish and strike at you with his foot.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Kiwi drill the earth every day--or rather every night--in their search for worms, but Lady Kiwi does all the excavating when it comes to making the nest. This she does by digging a tunnel, generally under the roots of a tree fern. There she lays two eggs and then her family cares are practically over for the time being, since it is the male kiwi who does most of the setting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. HORNBILL LOCKS THE DOOR

In Africa, Southern Asia, and the East Indies live the Hornbills. After the nest is built and the eggs laid in the hollow of some big tree like that, Mrs. Hornbill begins to set; and Mr. Hornbill, to protect her from enemies, walls up the nest with mud--all but that hole through which she puts her bill and gets food from the devoted father and husband.]

Other long-nosed tunnel diggers you must have seen many a time when you've been fis.h.i.+ng, for they are fishers, too--Mr. and Mrs. Kingfisher.

Their home is at the end of a tunnel in the banks of the stream where they do their fis.h.i.+ng.

While we're visiting them and making a study of their household arrangements, it's a good thing for us that we're not kingfishers ourselves; for if there's anything that makes the kingfishers mad it's to have other kingfishers fooling around their place or even coming into their front yard. Each pair of kingfishers lays claim to the part of the creek in the neighborhood of their nest, as their fis.h.i.+ng preserve, and woe betide any other kingfisher that trespa.s.ses!

Human fishermen and hunters give it out sometimes that kingfishers eat big fish that might otherwise be caught with a hook or a seine, but the fact is these birds catch only minnows and little shallow-water fish.

In digging the tunnels for their nests the two birds work together, and these tunnels are sometimes fifteen feet long. So you see that with kingfishers scattered around the world as they are--some 200 species in all--they must have done an enormous amount of ploughing in the course of time; to say nothing of what they have done in the way of enriching the soil with fish-bones, one of the very best of all fertilizers.

The kingfisher's nest wouldn't be at all attractive to some birds--the swallows, for example, who are so particular about having feather-beds.

It has just a hard-earth floor like the cabins of the American pioneers, but the little kingfishers are perfectly contented and happy; for their meals are very plentiful, fairly regular, and the fish are always fresh.

FIs.h.i.+NG DAYS AND OTHER DAYS

But some days even the kingfishers don't have fish for dinner. Instead they serve crayfish and frogs. This is on cloudy days, or when the wind is stiff and the water rough. On such days even the keen eyes of the kingfisher can't see a fish or make out exactly where the fish is when he does see one. But on clear, quiet days, you should see him fish. He often dives from a perch fifty feet or more above the creek and strikes the water so hard you'd think it would knock the breath out of him. But up he comes with his fish, nearly every time!

Of course he misses occasionally, but just think of seeing a fish that far away--under the water, mind you; and not a big fish, but a little minnow, only two or three inches long.

II. UNDER THE OVEN-BIRD'S FRIENDLY ROOF

Another great little farmer is the oven-bird. We can't afford to miss him and his wife for anything; and although we have to go to South America to meet them, we'll do it. So here we are! The oven-birds build a nest of clay mixed with some hair or gra.s.s or real fine little roots.

This nest, when it's all done--it takes a good while to build it--is so big you'd hardly believe it was the home of so small a bird. It's a dome-shaped affair, like a Dutch oven. In the United States we have what we call an "oven-bird," too--one of the water-thrushes; but as its dome-shaped nest is made of gra.s.s and leaves and has no clay in it, we will not include this bird among the feathered farmers. The oven-bird of South America knows how to build its dome of clay without any scaffolding, which isn't easy.

OVEN-BIRD DOORS AND THE FRIENDLY ROAD

While the big flamingoes are so shy, the little oven-birds don't care who sees them--provided they can see _him_ first. This is possibly because they want to keep an eye on any suspicious movements; for they make it an invariable rule to build so that their front doors will face the road. But really I think they do this, not because they are suspicious, but because they want to be neighborly and arrange their homes so they can sit on their front stoop and watch the crowd go by.

They not only have their doors where they can see what's going on, but they nearly always build near the country road or the village street, and in the most conspicuous place they can find, instead of staying off by themselves in those vast, lonesome woods of Brazil where they lived before man came.

When a nest is to be built the oven-bird picks up the first likely-looking root fibre, or a horsehair, or a hair from an old cow's tail, carries it to some pond or puddle and, with this binding material, works bits of mud into a little ball about the size of a filbert. Then he flies with this pellet to the place where the nest is going up. With clay b.a.l.l.s like this laid down and then worked together, the two birds make the floor of their little house. On the outer edge of the floor they build up the walls. These walls they gradually incline inward, just as the Eskimos build their snow-block huts, until they form a dome with a little hole in it. The last little ball they bring goes to fill that little hole and then the house is done, so far as the walls and roof are concerned. Next, a front door is cut through the wall that faces the road.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FRIENDLY DOOR THAT FACES THE ROAD

Oven-birds make it a rule to build their adobe homes so that the front door will face the road. And they nearly always build near the road or the village street. Neighborly little creatures!]

From the front door a part.i.tion is built reaching nearly to the back of the house, shutting off the front room from the family bedroom. After the eggs are laid Papa Oven-bird stays in the front room--or thereabouts--while mamma sets in the back room. The object of the little part.i.tion seems to be to protect mother and the eggs and, when they come, the babies from wind and rain. When the four or five baby birds arrive both papa and mamma put in most of their time, of course, feeding them.

The nests of the oven-birds weigh eight or nine pounds. The work of these little feathered farmers and their wives reminds us in more ways than one of that of Mrs. Mason-Bee,[22] but they evidently have quite different notions about housekeeping; for, although their residences are so big, the oven-birds would evidently rather build than clean house, while with Mrs. Bee it's just the other way. The nests of the oven-birds are so thick and strong they often stand for two or three years in spite of the rains; but the birds build a new nest every year, nevertheless.

[22] Chapter VI.