548 ZYGODACTYLI, 



Peculiarity of food appears wholly to influence the visits 

 and residence of this bird, and in plain, champaign, or 

 mountainous countries, they are wholly strangers, though 

 common along the banks of all the intermediate water- 

 courses and lagoons. 



Of their manners at the interesting period of propaga- 

 tion and incubation we are not yet satisfactorily inform- 

 ed. They nest in hollow trees, and take little, if any 

 ■pains, to provide more than a simple hollow in which to 

 lay their eggs, like the Woodpeckers. Several females 

 deposit their eggs in the same cavity ; the number laid by 

 each is said to be only 2, which are nearly round, and 

 of a light greenish-white.* They are, at all times, par- 

 ticularly attached to the large sycamores, in the hollow 

 trunks of which they roost in close community, and enter 

 at the same aperture into which they climb. They are 

 said to cling close to the sides of the tree, holding fast 

 by the claws and bill ; and into these hollows they often 

 retire during the day, either in very warm or inclement 

 weather, to sleep or pass away the time in indolent and 

 social security, like the Rupicolasf of the Peruvian caves, 

 at length only hastily aroused to forage at the calls of hun- 

 ger. Indeed from the swiftness and celerity of their aeri- 

 al movements, darting through the gleaming sunshine, 

 like so many sylvan cherubs, decked in green and 

 gold, it is obvious that their actions as well as their man- 

 ners are not calculated for any long endurance ; and shy 

 and retiring from all society but that to which they are 

 inseparably wedded, they rove abroad with incessant ac- 

 tivity, until their wants are gratified, when, hid from 

 sight, they again relapse into that indolence which seems 

 a relief to their exertions. 



* AuDUBox. Dm. Biog. i. p. 139. 



t Cock of the Rock of Peru, wlach is also somewhat related, apparently, to the Par- 

 rots 



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