Read Ebook: Beautiful Birds by Selous Edmund Astley Hubert D Illustrator

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This wonderful bird builds a wonderful nest with a roof to it, so that he can get right inside it and be quite hidden from sight, tail and all, although he is so large--almost as large as a pheasant, even without counting his tail. As a rule it is only little birds that make nests like that, and not big ones. The Lyre-bird's nest is something like the one that our little wren makes--which perhaps you have seen--only of course ever so much bigger. Only one egg is laid in it, and out of it comes one of the queerest little birds you can imagine, all covered with white, fluffy down, and with no tail at all that you can see, so that you would never think he was going to grow into a Lyre-bird. It takes him four years to get that wonderful tail. Apollo did not mean him to have it, until he was quite grown up--it was not a thing to be entrusted to children.

The Resplendent Trogon and the Argus Pheasant

This Mexico is such an interesting country. It belongs, now, to the Spaniards, whom I dare say you have heard about, but once it belonged to a quite different people, an old people who had been there for hundreds and hundreds of years, long before Columbus discovered America. These people were civilised, only in a different way to ourselves. They did not wear the kind of clothes that we do, but only light linen things, dyed all sorts of colours, which were prettier and suited the climate. They had many cities, as we have, though they were built in a different way, and the largest was built all over a great lake, with bridges going from one side of it to another. One can build houses in the water, you know, for there is Venice in Italy, and Rotterdam in Holland, which are both built in the sea, and which your mother will tell you about.

But what I wanted to tell you about these old Aztecs, who lived in Mexico all that time ago, was that, when the Spaniards came there, they were ruled over by a great king named Montezuma, and this king, amongst many other wonderful things, had a great place, where he kept all the different kinds of birds that were found in his country. A place like that is called an aviary, and you may be quite sure that the beautiful Trogon or Quezal was one of the birds in King Montezuma's aviary, for it was more highly thought of than any other bird in the country. Let us hope that all the birds in this aviary had nice, large places to be in, with trees, and flowers, and everything that they wanted; and, as it was a king's aviary, I daresay they had.

These beautiful Quezals live in the forests of Mexico, and they like to sit lazily on the branch of a tree, and let their beautiful long tails hang down underneath it, like the "funny feathers" of the Birds of Paradise. At least the male birds like to do that, because the female Quezals have not got those beautiful, long feathers, although they are very fine birds even without them. They are not so handsome as the males, but they are not plain like the female Humming-birds or Birds of Paradise. Perhaps the male Quezals show off their fine feathers to the females by letting them hang down like that, because, of course, long, soft, drooping feathers, such as they have, would not stand up in the air, like those of the peacock or of the Lyre-bird. But very likely they have some other nice way of showing them.

Now I will tell you about a very beautiful pheasant--the Argus Pheasant. Some people may think him the most beautiful one of all. And yet he is not the most showy pheasant--for the pheasants, you know, are very showy birds indeed. There is the Golden Pheasant, who is dressed in the sun's own livery; and the Silver Pheasant, who has a silver white one which is more like the moon's, but who looks gaudy and smart all the same; and the Amherst Pheasant, who manages to be handsomer than both the sun and moon--which is very clever of him; and the Fire-back, who is all in a blaze without minding it at all; and the Impeyan or Monal, who looks as if he was made of beaten metal, and had just been polished up with a piece of wash-leather. There is the Peacock, too--for he is really nothing but a large pheasant--so, you see, the pheasants are a handsome family, and you may be sure that they know how to appreciate themselves. The pheasant that we are going to talk about is quite a large bird, not so large as the peacock, it is true, but with still longer tail-feathers, and oh, such wonderful wings! One may say, indeed, that this bird is all wings and tail, but he is principally wings, at least when he spreads them out. But, even when they are folded, they are so very large that he looks quite wrapped up in them; and I think he is, too, partly because of that, but still more because they are so very handsome.

I have told you how large the wings of the Argus Pheasant are; when he spreads them out to show to the hen bird , they look like two banners or two beautiful feather-fans, the kind of fans that you see Eastern queens being fanned with, in the pictures. Then he has a very fine tail as well, as I told you. Two of the feathers in it are very long indeed--quite four feet long, I should think--and as broad as a man's hand, if not broader, near the base , but getting gradually narrower towards the tips. On one side, these feathers are a soft, rich brown, with silver-white spots, and, on the other, a soft, silver grey, with silver-white spots. When the Argus Pheasant spreads out his two great wings, he takes care to lift up his fine handsome tail, as well, so that the two long feathers of it are quite high in the air. So there is his tail going up like a rocket, whilst his wings spread out on each side of it, like feather-fans, and his head comes out between them, just in the middle, and makes a polite bow to the hen. That is the right way to do it, and the Argus Pheasant would rather not do it at all than not do it properly. Oh, he takes a great deal of trouble about it, and all for the hen--which is unselfish.

White Egrets, "Ospreys," and Ostrich-Feathers

But now, perhaps, you will say that if "fine feathers make fine birds," then beautiful feathers must make beautiful birds, too, and so the White Egret must be a beautiful bird. Oh, yes, he is. You are quite right. I did not mean that he was not a beautiful bird at all. All I meant was that he was not quite so beautiful as the Birds of Paradise and the Humming-birds, and birds like that--birds that look as if they had flown into a jeweller's shop, and then flown out again with all the best part of the jewellery upon them. Whether he is not as beautiful as some of the other birds we have talked about--but I will not say which, for fear of offending them--that I am not quite so sure of; but, at any rate, he is beautiful.

But now, let me tell you about those beautiful feathers which the poor White Egret has. They grow only on his back--about the middle of it--and droop down to a little way over his tail, so that they are a foot or more long. You remember what I explained to you about the feathers in the tail of the Lyre-bird, and those that make the plumes in the beautiful Birds of Paradise--how the barbs of the feather on each side of the quill have no barbules to hold them together, so that they fall apart and wave about like beautiful, soft, silky threads. If you have forgotten, then you must look back for it, because I should not explain it better here than I do there, and, besides, it would be twice over. Well, these feathers are made in the same way, only they are of a pure, shining white--like all the rest of this birds plumage--and although they are as soft as silk they are stiff at the same time, and so smooth that they look like the delicate flakings from a piece of beautiful, pure, polished ivory. Imagine a little fountain of ivory threads all shooting up together into the air, quite straight at first, and then bending over and drooping down in the most delicate, graceful way imaginable. That is what a plume of those feathers looks like, when they have been taken out and tied together, but I wish, myself, that they did not look nearly so beautiful, for it is because of those beautiful plumes, that the poor bird is being killed and killed and becoming scarcer and scarcer, every day. For the women whose hearts the little demon has frozen, wear these plumes in their hats and in their hair, and they are called "ospreys," and are very fashionable indeed.

Well, these poor White Egrets--these masterpieces that are always being destroyed--are birds that live, mostly, in America--in Mexico, and California, and Florida, and, I think, all over South and Central America. They live in the swamps and lagunes--as they are called--of the great forests, where trees grow all about in the water--such dark, gloomy, wonderful places--and the servants of the little demon, whose business it is to kill them, have to follow them to those places, and live there, too. Of course it is very unhealthy for them, and they often die there; but the women with the frozen hearts do not mind that, any more than they mind the Egrets being shot. They want the feathers, and when they pay for the feathers they pay for the lives as well--for they are honest, although their hearts have been frozen.

Perhaps you will wonder how men can live at all, in such places as those. Of course, as it is all water, they have to live in boats or canoes, and as soon as they have found out a pool or creek, where the White Egrets come to catch fish, or some trees where they have built their nests, they cover their boats over with reeds or rushes or ferns or the branches of trees, so that, even though you were to come quite close to them, you would not think they were boats at all, but only part of the forest. That is what the poor White Egrets think, for the men sit in their covered-up boats, quite silently--without speaking a word--and, as soon as they come near enough to them, fire at them and kill them.

And they will do that now, because you and every little child in the world will have asked them to. Yes, they will do it now. They will take off those hats--those hats of starvation and murder, of terrible and shameful cruelty--they will leave off wearing them, they will never put them on, again. Those plumes called "ospreys," that one sees everywhere--in streets and in shop-windows, at concerts, at meetings, and in churches--that bend above fine sentiments, that wave over charities and goodnesses, and tremble, softly, in the breath that prayers are made of--they will tear them out of their hats and out of their hair--yes, and out of their hearts too. They will hate them, they will loathe them, and when they say, next time, in church, upon their knees, "Give us this day our daily bread," they will try not to remember them, or only to think that they are unfashionable.

Oh, make them unfashionable! for you have not yet, you have not said "promise" yet. Oh, then, at once, at once! Break the spell of the demon, that spell that is so real and so cruel, that spell that kills the soul. Thaw the poor frozen heart, thaw it with your own warm one, with your lips, with your soft hands and arms. Thaw it with the tears in your eyes, as they look up, thaw it with the words that you say, "Mother, do not kill parents, and make children starve! Mother, do not wear 'ospreys!' Oh, mother, promise, promise!"

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Archaic, obsolete, unusual and inconsistent spellings have been maintained as in the original book. Obvious errors have been fixed as noted below.

Page 119: spring from the top of the small Originally: spring from the the top of the small

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