Three Funny Birds
By A. Hyatt Verrill
From Everyland, April 1916. Digitized by Doug Frizzle,
Mar 2012.
All readers of Everyland who collect stamps must have
noticed the graceful bird on the stamps from
Guatemala.
This is the Quetzal or Resplendent
Trogan. It would have been far more appropriate as the
emblem of Mexico than of Guatemala for when the
Spaniards first came to Mexico,
they found the
Aztecs' kings and priests wearing robes and head-dresses made from the
feathers of the
quetzal which was the sacred bird of
the Mexicans.
The quetzal is as beautiful
in color as in form, and is bright green above and scarlet below, with a black
and white tail. The male bird has several long feathers,
often a yard or more in length, projecting from
the back and drooping over the short tail, but the
female is not so brightly colored and lacks these
long, graceful feathers.
The quetzal lays its eggs in
holes in trees and the father bird, who is a very devoted husband, helps his
mate by taking turns at sitting on the
eggs.
Of course the long feathers
on his tail, of which he is very proud, would soon be broken and injured in the hole, and to prevent this the
quetzal does a very funny thing. This consists in digging the hole clear through the
limb of the tree, and then the
pretty father sits upon the white eggs with his fine tail safely hanging out
of the hole, and in this position he
can leave the nest without turning
around and ruining the long feathers.
But a cousin of the quetzal has an even funnier habit. This bird is
a handsome fellow with a deep-blue
back and yellow breast. One day while walking through the
woods in Central America I saw one of these trogans perched upon a branch near a large
hornets’ nest. While I was watching him he darted forward, snapped up a hornet
and disappeared. Puzzled at the way
he vanished, I examined the limb
carefully, expecting to find he had slipped into some
hole, when to my great surprise he suddenly flitted out from the
opening in the hornets' nest! As the hornets were very large and lively, I didn't
investigate further, but afterwards
I discovered that these trogans
actually make their nests inside of the hornets' home
and add insult to injury by feeding themselves
and their babies on the rightful owners of the
nests.
You may think this is a funny
sort of place for a bird to live, but what would you say to a bird that builds
barbed wire fences to keep intruders from
entering his nest? In the same
countries where the quetzal and his
hornet-loving cousin are found there
is a small reddish-brown bird with a stubby tail with two long, stiff feathers sticking out behind. He is a shy, suspicious
little chap who lives in thorny hedges and along old fences and is really a
sort of wren. He is such a tiny little fellow that no one would ever believe he
was the maker of the huge nests which may be seen among the bushes and thickets where he lives, but it is a
fact nevertheless. The funniest
thing about the nests is not their size, however, but the
curious way in which they arc built.
When the
wrens are ready to begin housekeeping, they
select a small bush or tree with horizontal branches, and across these they
place sticks which are fastened in place by tough grass and roots until a rough
platform is made about six feet in length and two feet wide. On the end of this floor, and close to the trunk of the
tree or bush, the wrens build a dome-shaped nest about a foot high and with thick
walls composed of interwoven thorns.
Then from this nest they make a curved or zigzag tunnel to the outer end of the
platform. Even then they are not satisfied and make their home
even more secure by building little thorn fences across the
tunnel, leaving just room enough for
the wrens to squeeze through. When they leave the
nest, the wrens close their doors behind them
by placing thorns across the
openings in the fences so that no
robber can get in to rob the nest or
destroy the dainty speckled eggs
within.
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