How Birds Fight 



several of which I kept and studied in Calcutta. 

 These vicious little wretches — they are only 

 about as big in body as a turtle-dove — had 

 a way of seizing each other with the bill, and 

 then pummelling the victim with both armed 

 pinions at once, in a way which must have been 

 very unpleasant. 



The other species of Indian jacana, the bronze- 

 winged (Metopidius indicus), has a most peculiar 

 and vindictive weapon. It is not spurred, but 

 has the radius, or inner bone of that middle 

 segment of the wing which corresponds to our 

 forearm, broadened out into a knife-like blade, 

 which ought to deliver a most telling blow, but 

 one, as might be supposed, which would hurt 

 the deliverer as much as the recipient, since the 

 bone is covered with skin as usual ; but birds 

 do not seem to feel much when fighting, and 

 the wing is in any case less sensitive than the 

 foot, judging from the equanimity with which 

 birds bear the operation of pinioning ; I have 

 seen a duck begin to feed as soon as released 

 after it. 



Double wing-spurs are found only in the 

 screamers, those large South American water- 

 fowl of which the best-known species, the chaja, 

 or crested screamer, is generally on view at the 

 Zoo, and has bred there, the first recorded 



instance of its reproduction in captivity. The 



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