Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of MexicoBishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
General
Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico
Bishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
Boats and boating; Mississippi River -- Description and travel; Ohio River -- Description and travel
The birds soon reached the locality of my camp, and circling through
the clear, warm atmosphere above the tree-tops, they gradually settled
lower and lower, suspiciously scanning my fire, screaming as though
their little throats would burst, while the sunlight seemed to fill
the air with the reflections of the green, gold, and carmine of their
brilliant plumage. They dropped into the foliage of the grove, and for
a moment were as quiet as though life had departed from them, while I
kept close to my hiding-place behind an immense fallen tree, from
beneath which I could watch my feathery guests.
The bodies of the adult birds were emerald green, with bright blue
reflections. The heads were yellow, excepting the forehead and cheeks,
which were scarlet. The large, thick, and hooked bill was white, as
well as the bare orbital space around the eye. The feet were a light
flesh-color. The length from tip of bill to end of tail was about
fourteen inches. The young birds could be easily distinguished from
the adults by their short tails and the uniform coat of green, while
in some cases the frontlet of scarlet was just beginning to show
itself. The adult males were longer than the females.
The Carolina Parrot does not put on its bright-yellow hues until the
second season, and its most brilliant tints do not come to perfection
until the bird is fully two years old. They feed upon the seeds of the
cockle-burrs, which grow in abandoned fields of the planter, as well
as upon fruits of all kinds, much of which they waste in their
uneconomical method of eating. The low alluvial bottom-lands of the
river, where pecan and beech nuts abound, are their favorite hunting-
grounds.
It is singular that Alexander Wilson, and, in fact, all the
naturalists, except Audubon, who have written about this interesting
bird, have failed to examine its nest and eggs. By the unsatisfactory
manner in which Audubon refers to the nidification of this parakeet,
one is led to believe that even he did not become personally
acquainted with its breeding habits.
The offer by Mr. Maynard of one dollar for every parrot's egg
delivered to him, induced a Florida cracker to cut a path into a dense
cypress swamp at Dunn's Lake, about the middle of the month of June.
The hunter was occupied three days in the enterprise, and returned
much disgusted with the job. He had found the nests of the parakeets
in the hollow cypress-trees of the swamp, but he was too late to
secure the eggs, as they were hatched, and the nests filled with young
birds. The number of young in each nest seemed to leave no doubt of
the fact of several adults nesting in one hole. Probably the eggs are
laid about the last of May.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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