From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

On a perpendicular part of the river bank, at a safe distance above the high-water mark, the bee-eaters have hollowed out their deep brooding burrows, narrow at the entrance, but widening out into an oven-like form at the inner end. The whole colony only covers a few square yards, though it consists of at least thirty, and more frequently from eighty to a hundred pairs. The circular openings to the various holes, measuring only from one and a half to two inches in diameter, are not more than six inches distant from each other. It is difficult to understand how each pair knows the entrance to its own hole; yet even when they come from a distance the delicately-winged active birds fly straight to the proper holes without hesitation or apparent consideration; their incomparably sharp eyes, which can detect a passing fly a hundred paces away, never mislead them. The bustling life about the colony is a fascinating sight. Every tree or bush in the neighbourhood is decorated with at least one pair of the beautiful, sociable birds; on every branch which affords an outlook sits a pair, and each mate takes a tender interest in all that concerns the other. In front of the nest-holes the bustle is like that about a bee-hive; some glide in, others glide out; some come, others go; many hover continually around the entrance to their brooding-places. Only when night draws on do they disappear into their holes; then all is quiet and still.

At a different part of the bank, where tall trees droop over the water, or are surrounded by it when it is very high, the golden weaver-birds have established a colony. They, too, brood in companies, but they build hanging nests cleverly plaited from stalks or fibres, and attached to the points of the outermost branches of the trees. No covetous monkey or other egg-robber, not even a snake, can approach these nests without running a risk of falling into the water. At least thirty, but more frequently forty to sixty, weaver-birds build on a single tree, and their nests give it a most characteristic aspect; indeed, they have a striking effect on the whole landscape. Unlike other birds, it is in this case not the females but the males who build the nest, and they do it with such unstinted eagerness that they make work for themselves after they have finished what is really necessary. Carrying in their bills a stalk newly bitten off, or a teased-out fibre, they hang by their feet to a twig, or to the nest itself, keep themselves in position by fluttering their wings, and work in their material, singing all the while. When one nest is built and finished inside, they proceed to make a second and a third; indeed, they may even pull a finished work to pieces again to satisfy their love of building. Thus they go on until the female, who has meanwhile been brooding, claims their assistance in the rearing of the young ones. This activity animates the whole colony, and the golden-yellow, mobile, active birds sitting or hanging in the most varied positions, are an ornament to the tree already decorated with their nests.

On the mimosas, which are leafless just at the general brooding time, the cow-weaver birds have erected structures very large for the size of the birds, which are scarcely so large as our starlings. Their nests are placed among the thickest branches at the top of the thorny mimosas, and as they are made entirely of thorny twigs on the outside, they have much the appearance of a scrubbing-brush; they are often more than a yard long, half as high and broad, and enclose roomy brooding-chambers entered by winding tunnels corresponding to the size of the birds, and impassable to other animals. On these trees, and about these nests, too, there is much lively and noisy bustle.

In the heart of the forest itself an attentive observer finds nests everywhere, though it is often difficult to recognize them. Little finches, for instance, build nests which are deceptively like heaps of dried grass blown together by the wind, but inside there is a soft, warm brooding-chamber lined with feathers; other birds choose building materials the colour of which is deceptively like that of the surroundings, while others do not build at all, but lay their earth-coloured eggs on the bare ground. Every cavity in the trees is now inhabited, and woodpeckers, barbets, and parrots are constantly at work making new chambers, or widening and adapting already existing cavities into brooding-holes, while the hornbills, on the other hand, busy themselves plastering up the too-wide entrances. The last-named birds are specially distinctive in their brooding habits, and deserve to be mentioned first.

When the hornbill by ardent wooing has won a mate, he helps her to seek out a suitable hole to serve as a nest. This found, he labours painfully with his clumsy bill to enlarge it to the required size. Then the female prepares to lay her eggs, and both mates plaster up the entrance, the female working from the inside, the male from the outside, until all is closed up save an opening large enough for the female to force her bill through. Shut off from the outer world in this isolated brooding-chamber, the female sits on her eggs, and the male has to feed not only his imprisoned mate, but later the quickly-growing ever hungry young ones, which remain in captivity until they are fully fledged. Then the mother breaks open the entrance from within, and the whole family emerges to the world fat and in good feather, thereby relieving from further toil the husband and father, who is reduced to a skeleton with the labour and anxiety of filling so many mouths.[51]

Similar conjugal and paternal tenderness is exhibited by the umber-bird, a stork-like bird about the size of a raven, which leads a quiet, nocturnal life in the forest, and builds an enormous nest, one of the most remarkable built by any bird. These nests are usually placed at but a short distance from the ground, in forks of the trunk, or on any thick boughs of the lower part of the crown that are strong enough to bear them; for they exceed the nests of the largest birds of prey in circumference and weight, being often from one and a half to two yards in diameter and not much less in height, and consisting of fairly thick branches and twigs, which are neatly stuck together or mortared with clay. If one does not happen to notice how the umber-bird slips out and in one would never imagine that these structures were hollow, but would rather take them for the eyrie of a bird of prey, especially as eagles and horned owls frequently nest on the top of them. But when one has seen the real owner enter, and has inspected the nest closely, one finds that the interior is divided into three compartments, connected by holes which serve as doors, and further observation reveals that these three compartments answer the purpose of hall, reception or dining room, and brooding-chamber. This last room, the farthest back, is slightly higher than the rest, so that if any water should get in it can flow away; but the whole structure is so excellently built that even heavy and long-continuing showers of rain do very little damage. Within the brooding-chamber, on a soft cushion of sedge and other materials, lie the three, four, or five white eggs on which the female sits; in the middle chamber the male meantime stores up all sorts of provisions, a bountiful supply of fish, frogs, lizards, and other dainties which he has caught, so that his mate can choose from these stores, and has only to reach forward to satisfy her hunger; in the entrance chamber the male stands or sits, whenever he is not busy hunting for food, to keep guard and to cheer his mate with his society, until the growing offspring take up the whole attention of both.[52]

The association of umber-bird and eagle or horned owl is not a solitary instance of friendly companionship on the part of birds belonging to different species and totally unlike in their habits. On the broad, fan-like leaves of the magnificent duleb-palm, which stand out horizontally from the trunk, the nests of the dwarf peregrine falcon and the guinea-dove often stand so close together that the falcon could easily grasp one of his neighbour’s young ones. But he does not touch them, for he is only accustomed to attack birds on the wing, and thus the little doves grow up in safety beside the little falcons, and the parents of both often sit peacefully beside each other, near their respective nests.[53]

Another palm gave me an opportunity of observing birds whose brooding surprised and fascinated me greatly. Round a single tom-palm there flew, with constant cries, small-sized swifts, nearly related to our own swifts, and my attention was thus directed to the tree itself. On close observation I saw that the birds frequently repaired between the leaves, and I then discovered on the grooves of the leaf-stalks light points which I took to be nests. I climbed the tree, bent one of the leaves towards me, and saw that each nest, which was made chiefly of cotton, was plastered firmly in the angle between the stalk and the midrib of the leaf, cemented by salivary secretion, after the method usually followed by swifts. But the hollow of the nest appeared to me so flat that I wondered how the two eggs could remain lying when the leaf was shaken by the wind. And it must have shaken with the slightest breath, not to speak of the storms which often raged here! Carefully I reached out my hand to take out the eggs; then I saw with astonishment that the mother had glued them firmly to the nest. And as I examined newly-hatched, tiny, helpless young birds, I saw, with increasing astonishment, that they, too, were attached to the nest in the same way, and were thus secured from falling out.

Fig. 32.—Long-tailed Monkeys.