File:Our search for a wilderness; an account of two ornithological expeditions to Venezuela and to British Guiana (1910) (14565815269).jpg

Identifier: oursearchforwild00nile (find matches)
Title: Our search for a wilderness; an account of two ornithological expeditions to Venezuela and to British Guiana
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Niles, Blair Beebe, William, 1877-1962
Subjects: Natural history Birds
Publisher: New York, H. Holt and company

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e Pom-padour Cotingas we saw the Black-tailed Tityra.113 In Mexicowe had seen a closely related species and here again were thestrange Frog-birds, with a little more black on the capand tail. We first observed a pair near the colony of Red-backedBunyahs in the creek bed, but as we were leaving the bunga-low for the last time, our farewell was made all the harderby discovering that the Tityras had begun to nest in a smalldead stub standing alone in the centre of the vegetable gardenand not twenty yards from the bungalow. The birds were having a hard time of it, carrying stiff, four-inch twigs into a three-inch hole, but they were succeeding,showing that they knew better than to hold the twig by thecentre. The whole head to below the eyes and including theupper nape was black, while the bare skin of the face and thebasal two-thirds of the beak were bright red. The male w asuniformly pale bluish white, while his male was distin-guished by many rather faint streaks of black on the breast,
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A GOLD MINE IN THE WILDERNESS. 179 sides, and under parts. Both birds alternated in carryingthe nesting material and in arranging it, remaining silentas long as we watched them. The nesting stub was aboutsix inches in diameter and the hole thirty feet above theground. These birds lack the bright hues of most of their relatives,but have the family trait of possessing some queer trick ofplumage. While the first flight feather of the wing is perfectlynormal, measuring about three and a half inches in length, thesecond is a mere parody of a feather, tapering to a point andreaching a length of less than two inches. Only the truelover of birds will realize what an effort it took to tear our-selves away from this pair of birds, whose eggs and youngappear to be as yet undescribed. Two Marail Guans6 and a Trumpeter25 were interesting in-mates of the hen-yard and made no effort to escape, althoughthey were full-winged and had the run of the clearing. TheTrumpeter went to roost each night at 5.3

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