Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 1, July 1898: Illustrated by Color Photography — John Shaqi
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 1, July 1898: Illustrated by Color PhotographyVarious
History
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 1, July 1898: Illustrated by Color Photography
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
Down in Mexico there lives a Woodpecker who stores his nuts and acorns
in the hollow stalks of the yuccas and magueys. These hollow stalks
are separated by joints into several cavities, and the sagacious bird
has somehow found this out, and bores a hole at the upper end of each
joint and another at the lower, through which to extract the acorns
when wanted. Then it fills up the stalks solidly and leaves its stores
there until needed, safe from the depredations of any thievish bird or
four-footed animal.
The first place in which this curious habit was observed was on a
hill in the midst of a desert. The hill was covered with yuccas and
magueys, but the nearest oak trees were thirty miles away, and so it
was calculated, these industrious birds had to make a flight of sixty
miles for each acorn stowed thus in the stalks!
An observer of birds remarks: "There are several strange features to
be noticed in these facts: the provident instinct which prompts this
bird to lay by stores of provisions for the winter, the great distance
traversed to collect a kind of food so unusual for its race, and its
seeking in a place so remote from its natural abode a storehouse so
remarkable."
Can instinct alone teach, or have experience and reason taught these
birds that, far better than the bark of trees or crevices in rocks
or any other hiding place are these hidden cavities they make for
themselves with the hollow stems of distant plants?
This we cannot answer. But we do know that one of the most remarkable
birds in our country is this California Woodpecker, and that he is
well entitled to his Mexican name of el carpintero--the carpenter
bird.--_Exchange._
THE OCELOT.
The smaller spotted and striped species of the genus _Felis_, of both
the old and the new world, are commonly called Tiger-Cats. Of these one
of the best known and most beautifully marked, peculiar to the American
continent, according to authority, has received the name of Ocelot,
_Felis pardalis_, though zoologists are still undecided whether under
this name several distinct species have not been included, or whether
all the Ocelots are to be referred to as a single species showing
individual or racial variation. Their fur has always a tawny yellow or
reddish-grey ground color, and is marked with black spots, aggregated
in streaks and blotches, or in elongated rings enclosing an area which
is rather darker than the general ground color. They range through the
wooded parts of Tropical America, from Arkansas to Paraguay, and in
their habits resemble the other smaller members of the cat tribe, being
ready climbers and exceedingly blood-thirsty.
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