Natural History: Or, Uncle Philip's Conversations with the Children about Tools and Trades among Inferior AnimalsHawks, Francis L. (Francis Lister)
Religion
Natural History: Or, Uncle Philip's Conversations with the Children about Tools and Trades among Inferior Animals
Hawks, Francis L. (Francis Lister)
Animals -- Juvenile literature; Insects -- Juvenile literature; Natural history -- Juvenile literature
"There is another kind which Mr. Vaillant speaks of, and I will tell you
of that. He calls it the capocier, and he had a very fine opportunity to
watch two of them. It is a bird easily made gentle, and he had managed
by feeding two of them to make them so tame that they would come into
his tent and hop about several times in a day, though he never had them
in a cage. When it became time for them to build a nest, they staid away
for some time, and would come to the tent once only in four or five
days. At last they began to come regularly, as before, and Mr. Vaillant
soon found out what they came for. They had seen upon his table cotton
and moss and flax, which he used to stuff the skins of birds, and which
were always lying there; and the capociers had come for these things,
to build their nest of them. They would take up large bunches of them
in their bills and fly away. Mr. Vaillant followed and watched them to
see the nest built, and found them at work in the corner of a garden, by
the side of a spring, in a large plant which grew under the shade of a
tree. They were building in the fork of the branches, and had laid the
foundation, which was about four inches high and six inches across. This
part was made of moss and flax, mixed with grass and tufts of cotton.
The next day this gentleman never left the side of the nest: the female
was at work building, and the male brought the materials. In the morning
the male bird made twenty-nine journeys to Mr. Vaillant's table for flax
and cotton and moss; and in the afternoon he made seventeen. He would
help his mate to trample down and press the cotton with his body, so
as to make it into felt. Whenever he came with a load, he would put it
either upon the edge of the nest or upon some branch within reach of the
female.
"After he began to help the female at her work, he would often break
off, and begin to play; and sometimes, as if in mischief, he would pull
down a little of her work. She would get angry, and peck him with her
bill: but he still continued to vex her, until at last, to save her work
from being pulled down, she would stop working, and fly off from bush
to bush, to tease him. They would then make up the quarrel, and she
set about her work, while he would sing most delightfully for several
minutes. After his song was finished, he would go to work again, until
he got into a new fit of mischief and frolic, and then he would torment
her as before.
"On the third day the birds began to build the walls, after having
repeatedly pressed the bottom, and turned themselves round upon it in
all directions, to make the nest solid. They first made a plain border
all around; this they trimmed, and on it they piled up tufts of cotton,
which they felted in by beating and pressing with their breasts and
wings; and if any part stuck out, they worked it in with their bills,
so as to make all perfectly smooth and firm. And they worked their nest
round the branches near it, just as the chaffinch does.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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