The topmost branch of a tall tree, called the Mora, when dead, is the favorite resort of the Toucan, where it cannot be reached by the gunner. It seems to fancy itself more beautiful, when its tail is trimmed, and it therefore uses its beak to do this, as the barber employs his scissors to trim our hair. When asleep, the Toucan takes great care of its bill, covering it nicely with the back plumage, so that the whole bird looks like a great round ball of feathers. Its body is about eighteen inches long.
Next uncle Brown showed Charley a bird, called the Parrakeet. It was a very pretty one, with a green body, a red bill, and a rose-colored band round its neck, from which it is sometimes named the Rose-ringed Parrakeet.
RINGED PARRAKEET.
This bird is often tamed, and, from its gentle disposition and pleasant ways, is a great favorite. It seems very fond of ripe walnuts halved, and while picking out the meat, makes a little clucking noise, showing that it is pleased.
It is soon taught to repeat words and short sentences and to speak quite plainly. Sometimes, when angry, it screams loudly, and seems to practise any new accomplishment when it thinks that nobody can hear it.
Another Bird, added to our Boy's Museum, was called the Brush Turkey, because it is found mostly in the thick brush-wood of New South Wales. The gentleman, who first made it known to the public, tells also of a very curious way, in which the bird makes its nest. It never uses its bill, as other birds do, but tears up grass and dirt and sticks with its foot and flings it backward into a heap, and thus clears the ground, for some distance round, so thoroughly, that hardly a grass blade or leaf is left.
BUSH TURKEY
Having finished the pile and waited till it has become heated enough it lays its eggs, not side by side, as in common cases, but places them, with the large end upwards, from nine to twelve inches apart, perfectly upright and buried at nearly an arm's length. The eggs are covered up, as they are laid, and left until the heat hatches them. Sometimes a bushel of them are found in one heap, and are very fine eating. When this Turkey is disturbed, it runs swiftly through the under-brush, or springs upon the low branch of some tree, and leaps from limb to limb till it reaches the top.