Ornithological and Other Oddities 



complexions of a livid mauve ; but the carriage 

 is always noticeable, as the bird moves easily 

 and gracefully on the ground, instead of hobbling 

 awkwardly as hawks usually do. 



For the caracara is, in respect of his feet and 

 their use, only half a hawk. Compared with 

 the long toes and exquisitely tapered talons of 

 the falcons or goshawks, his somewhat fowl-like 

 feet seem decidedly ineffective weapons, and his 

 method of employing them is in correspondence 

 with this structure. When taking anything off 

 the ground, he does not seize it with his feet 

 like the hawk tribe generally, but picks it up 

 with his bill like a crow or a gull, though he 

 will afterwards drop it and catch it in his 

 talons without interrupting his flight. Mr. W. 

 H. Hudson, the well-known chronicler of the 

 lives of the Pampas birds, has even seen a live 

 rat treated in this way, risky as the method 

 might seem ; and when, in the Calcutta Zoo- 

 logical Garden, I offered a rat to a bird there, 

 he, after clawing at it ineffectively, picked it up 

 by the tail with his bill in the most amateurish 

 way. When attacking a bird in the air, how- 

 ever, it uses its claws like other hawks, and 

 Mr. Hudson has seen such active species as 

 the domestic pigeon, the spur- winged South 

 American lapwing, and the white egret captured 



by it. In the last case, four birds, two adult 



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