156 JUNGLE ISLAND 



their small wings just as bigger birds hold 

 theirs. 



Part of their food is probably honey from 

 flowers, as w^e have always been taught, but when 

 we look at their tongues we find them forked at 



After Belt 



Fig. 67. Hummingbird' s pincer tongue 



the end so as to make a very good pair of pincers 

 (Fig. 67) for picking up the smallest bugs. Thomas 

 Belt, the English naturalist, who first found 

 out about their tongues, thought that when they 

 visit flowers they are picking off little insects. 

 They carry pollen from one flower to another, 

 just as our bumblebees do in clover, and so help 

 seeds to form. 



The most distinctly tropical birds were the 

 huge-billed toucans, which the natives call by a 

 Spanish name that means ''beak of iron." The 

 commonest toucan was a black bird about eight- 

 een inches long from tip of tail to tip of beak. 

 About one-fourth of his length was his round 

 olive-green bill, which was painted lengthwise with 

 wavy red and yellow lines. Under his chin he 

 wore a circular, bright yellow bib. Seen either 

 in a picture or in the forest, he looks as if he had 

 tied on a false beak to go to a masquerade (Fig. 68). 



I saw these birds flying past my spiked tree 

 with somewhat labored flight, head held down as 

 if by weight of the bill. Considering its size, the 



