Photo by D. Le Souef] [Melbourne.
NEW ZEALAND KAKA.
The Maoris keep this bird as a lure.
The birds of this section are also known as Brush-tongued Parrots, from the presence of a remarkable "brush" borne on the end of the tongue. This is a special adaptation, enabling the birds to feed upon honey; some, indeed, have this brush particularly well developed, and are almost entirely honey-seekers, whilst others, wherein the brush is less developed, live largely on fruits. Professor Moseley tells us that honey literally poured from the mouths of Blue Mountain-lories which he shot at Cape York.
The Cockatoos are abundant in the Australian region, but have their headquarters in the Malay Archipelago. Besides the familiar white-crested form so commonly kept in England, the group includes an iron-grey coloured bird with a bright red head, and a huge black species, which represents the giant of the order. It is a funereal-looking bird, the largest specimens inhabiting New Guinea. One of its most striking features is the beak, which is of enormous size. Its tongue differs from that of other parrots in that it is slender and cylindrical in shape, and of a deep red colour, instead of thick, fleshy, and black. It frequents, Mr. Wallace tells us, the lower parts of the forest, feeding upon various fruits and seeds, but displaying a marked partiality for the kernel of the canary-nut, which grows on a lofty forest-tree; "and the manner in which it gets at these seeds," writes Mr. Wallace, "shows a correlation of structure and habits which would point to the canary as its special food. The shell of this nut is so excessively hard that only a heavy hammer will crack it; it is somewhat triangular, and the outside is quite smooth. The manner in which the bird opens these nuts is very curious. Taking one end-ways in its bill, and keeping it firm by a pressure of the tongue, it cuts a transverse notch by a lateral sawing motion of the sharp-edged lower mandible. This done, it takes hold of the nut with its foot, and, biting off a piece of leaf, retains it in the deep notch by the upper mandible, and again seizing the nut, which is prevented from slipping by the elastic tissue of the leaf, fixes the edge of the lower mandible in the notch, and a powerful rip breaks off a piece of the shell. Again taking the nut in its claws, it inserts the very long and sharp point of the bill, and picks out the kernel, which is seized hold of, morsel by morsel, by the extensile tongue."
Of the typical parrots, the best known is the common Grey African Parrot, with a red tail, so valued on account of its great talking powers. Other species of this section which should be mentioned here are the Pygmy Parrots, Macaws, Hawk-billed Parrot, Budgerigars, and Owl-parrot.
The first named are the smallest of all the tribe, remarkable as well for the splendour of the plumage as their size, which is less than that of the common sparrow.
The Long-tailed Macaws, representing the most showy and gaudily coloured of all the Parrot Tribe, inhabit the tropical forests of South America. Mr. Bates describes a flock of scarlet-and-blue macaws, which he came across one day, as looking like a cluster of flaunting banners among the crown of dark green leaves of a bacaba-palm.
The superb Hyacinthine Macaw is one of the rarest of the Parrot Tribe, and was found by Bates in the interior of Brazil. As its name implies, it is of a deep hyacinthine colour, relieved by a bare patch of pure white skin round the eyes. It feeds on the nuts of several palms, especially those of the macuja. These nuts, which are so hard as to be difficult to break without a heavy hammer, are crushed to a pulp by the powerful beak of this macaw.