Identifier: royalnaturalhist47lyde (find matches)
Title: The royal natural history
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Lydekker, Richard, 1849-1915 Sclater, Philip Lutley, 1829-1913 Frostick, W. B., former owner. DSI Brooks, W. T., former owner. DSI
Subjects: Zoology Natural history
Publisher: London and New York : Frederick Warne & Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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mmer a flock of about two hundred individualsfrequented a meadow near my house, and one day I observed them rise up veryearly in the evening and begin soaring about like a troop of swallows preparing to 1 The Argentine term for the small woods surrounding so many of the settlements on the jiampas. NIGHTJARS. 47 migrate. I watched them for upwards of an hour; out they did not scatter as on previous evenings to seek for food, and after a while they began to rise higher and higher, still keeping close together, until they disappeared from sight. Next morning I found that they had gone. With these large and mainly South American niohtiars we comeWood-NigHtjars. , ^- p xt_ i i x- ^i m to the sole representatives oi the second subiamily. Ihey are characterised by the plumage being more mottled than in the true nightjars, and the extreme shortness of the metatarsus, which is inferior in length to all the toes, as well as by the absence of the comb on the third toe. Moreover, the sides of the
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GREAT AVOOD-NIGHTJAU (\ nat. size). body and breast carry large poAvder-down patches, which do not exist in thetypical subfamily. Of these birds there are six species, which range from )\Iexicoto Brazil, and are also represented in Jamaica. The note of these nightjare isdescribed as being more extraordinary than that of any other bird. Waterton, forinstance, writes that a goatsucker inhabits Deraerara, about the size of anEnglish wood-owl, whose voice is so remarkable that, when once heard, it is noteasily to be forgotten. A stranger would never believe it to be the cry of a bird,but would say it was the departing voice of a midnight murdered victim, or thelast wailino- of poor Niobe for her children, before she was turned to stone.Suppose a person in hopeless sorrow, beginning w^ith a high loud note—Ha ha !ha ha! ha .—each note lower and lower till the last is scarcely heard, pausing a 48 PICARIAN BIRDS. moment or two between each exclamation, and you will have some idea of themo

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