This article represent the
first appearance of the column, The
Nature Club, in Everyland magazine.
The Bird That Shaves
Everyland's Nature Club
(Column)
By A. Hyatt Verrill
From
Everyland magazine Dec 1915. Digitized by Doug Frizzle March 2012.
Everyland
has regular subscribers in
more than thirty different countries, including every continent and many
islands of the sea. Boys and girls
of every land will be at home in Everyland's
Nature Club. We hope our readers will write of the
interesting things they see,—The Editor
Dear Readers of Everyland:
Each month I am going to tell
you about some of the odd beasts,
birds, insects, or plants of every land, and I want every girl and boy who
reads EVERYLAND to join this new Nature Club. To become a member all you have
to do is to send me a picture—either
a photograph or a drawing— or a story or a letter about some plant, tree, bird,
or other creature which is found in the country where you live. In every land there are live things and plants which have strange
ways, interesting lives, or curious habits, and which are not found in other parts of the
world. Such things may be so common and such every-day matters to you that you
don't think they arc odd or
interesting at all, and yet some reader of the
magazine in another land may never
have seen or heard of them. But the stories must be real or true stories and not
fairy tales or legends, for the
object of the Nature Club is to
teach the readers of Everyland the
truth about the many wonderful
plants and animals of the world.
Then there
will be puzzles to solve. Each month I will print two pictures, one of a bird
and one of an insect, fish, reptile, plant, or four-footed creature, and the readers of Everyland
must find out their names,
where they live and something of their uses or habits. Send the
answers to the address at the head of this department and the names of the
children who give correct answers will be printed, as well as the best letter about the
puzzle pictures. As the pictures
will represent plants or creatures from every land where readers of the magazine live, every one will have an equal
chance and sooner or later you will find a picture of something from your own
home and which you know about. And now for the
first story:
THIS queer bird lives in
South and Central America, the home of some of the
strangest birds, beasts, insects, and plants in all the
world. But of them all few have
funnier habits or more curious ways than this pretty fellow whose name is motmot. If you should
walk along the banks of some brook
or stream in the motmot's home and
should peer sharply among the low
branches you might spy a motmot perched quietly amid the
leaves and the bright-flowered
orchids. At a little distance he would seem quite plain and dull-colored, but
if you had him in your hand or could sec him close to you, you would find that
he was very pretty, with his bright-green feathers
on his back and rusty-green feathers
on his breast, and with bright blue and green wings and tail. The top of his
head and his cheeks are shiny black, with stripes of peacock-blue and violet
and in the center of his breast are
a few black feathers with blue or
purple edges. His bill is very strong and sharp and instead of being smooth,
like that of most birds, the edges
of the motmot's bill are notched
like a saw. But the most peculiar
thing about the motmot is his tail,
which is very different from the
tail of ordinary birds. In the
motmot's tail the two middle feathers are very long and look like slender wires with
tufts of feathers at their ends. When these
feathers first grow out they are just like the
other feathers
in the bird's tail but the funny motmot isn't satisfied with these and thinks he can add to his appearance by
shaving. Of course he doesn't use a razor, but his strong notched bill serves
just as well for his purpose and by bending his head down and his tail forward
he reaches the long feathers and shaves off the
plumes, leaving the little tufts at the tips, which you see in the
picture, just as some men shave the
beards off their faces and leave their mustaches.
But shaving isn't the
only queer habit of the motmots.
Their ways of keeping house are very strange. Motmots never build nests, but
dig long tunnels in the banks of
rivers and streams and in these they lay their
eggs. The baby motmots are very hungry little chaps and it would keep their parents busy all day long to hunt enough food
to satisfy their youngsters'
appetites. To save this trouble the
lazy motmots pile their homes full
of dead fish and small animals, such as frogs, mice, and lizards, and this mass
of decaying meat soon becomes filled with maggots upon which the young motmots feed until able to look after themselves.
The birds are very useful, as they kill and devour great numbers of mice, snakes,
insects, and vermin and so the
people don't hunt or kill them as they do other
birds. The motmots are so little afraid of human beings that the natives call them
bobos, which means fools. But perhaps the
bobos are not so silly as the people
imagine; maybe they are wise enough
to realize that they are safe from
harm because they are useful and their homes are filthy. What do you think?
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