"I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert."
In these sentences, we see that the Kaath was a bird of solitude that was to be found in the "wilderness," i.e. far from the habitations of man. This is one of the characteristics of the Pelican, which loves not the neighbourhood of human beings, and is fond of resorting to broad, uncultivated lands, where it will not be disturbed.
In them it makes its nest and hatches its young, and to them it retires after feeding, in order to digest in quiet the ample meal which it has made. Mr. Tristram well suggests that the metaphor of the Psalmist may allude to the habit common to the Pelican and its kin, of sitting motionless for hours after it has gorged itself with food, its head sunk on its shoulders, and its bill resting on its breast.
This is but one of the singular, and often grotesque, attitudes in which the Pelican is in the habit of indulging.
THE PELICAN.
"I am like a pelican in the wilderness."—Ps. cii. 6.
There are before me a number of sketches made of the Pelicans at the Zoological Gardens, and in no two cases does one attitude in the least resemble another. In one sketch the bird is sitting in the attitude which has just been described. In another it is walking, or rather staggering, along, with its head on one side, and its beak so closed that hardly a vestige of its enormous pouch can be seen. Another sketch shows the same bird as it appeared when angry with a companion, and scolding its foe in impotent rage; while another shows it basking in the sun, with its magnificent wings spread and shaking in the warm beams, and its pouch hanging in folds from its chin.
One of the most curious of these sketches shows the bird squatting on the ground, with its head drawn back as far as possible, and sunk so far among the feathers of the back and shoulders that only a portion of the head itself can be seen, while the long beak is hidden, except an inch or two of the end. In this attitude it might easily be mistaken at a little distance for an oval white stone.
The derivation of the Hebrew word kaath is a very curious one. It is taken from a verb signifying "to vomit," and this derivation has been explained in different ways.