44 UPUPA EPOPS. 



easily reared on flesh, which however, Bechstein remarks, it 

 cannot pick up well, because the tongue is too short to turn 

 the food into the throat, so that it is obliged to throw it up 

 into the air, and receive it with open bill. The same author, 

 in his " Cage Birds,"" states that, independently of its beauty, 

 it is attractive by the drollness of its actions, making a conti- 

 nual motion with its head, and tapping the floor with its beak. 

 M. Von Schauroth, in a letter addressed to M. Bechstein, gives 

 an account of two young Hoopoes, w^hich he took from a nest 

 placed at the top of an oak. They were exceedingly tame, 

 climbed on his clothes until they reached his shoulders or 

 head, and caressed him very affectionately. They w^ere fond 

 of beetles and JMay-bugs, wdiich they first killed, and then beat 

 them into a ball, which they threw into the air, and caught 

 lengthwise. 



It does not appear that the peculiar habits of this bird have 

 been w^ell described, for the brief notices given in books are 

 not sufficient to enable us to ascertain its character. In exter- 

 nal form it is very nearly allied to the Wall-Creeper, Ticho- 

 droma muraria, and for that reason chiefly I have placed it 

 in the family of Certhianae ; but if not intimately allied to the 

 Alcedinae, it certainly indicates a transition to them. 



An individual of this species was shot near Edinburgh in 

 the autumn of 1832, and Mr Binnie, farmer at Avon Bank, 

 about a mile and a half from Linlithgow, states that in 1835, 

 one was seen in his neighbourhood for seven or eight weeks, 

 residing chiefly in Kinneil Wood, but occasionally coming very 

 near his house. 



