90 THE BIOLOGY OF BIRDS 



The Red-winged Starlings of South Africa include in 

 their menu the berries of the syringa, which they eat in such 

 quantities that they are stupefied by some included narcotic. 

 Similar states of intoxication have been observed in wood- 

 peckers, who tap the stems of the sugar-maple and in some 

 frugivorous birds who indulge in fermenting fruit. One 

 would like to know more about the hairs of the hairy cater- 

 pillars for which cuckoos have so strong an appetite. They 

 accumulate, as is well known, in the stomach, and the 

 rhythmical movements continued during the churning 

 and digestion press them against particular areas of the 

 mucous lining of the stomach and embed them firmly. 

 Are they shed after a time ? Are they thrown up as pellets ? 

 Are they helps or hindrances to digestion ? Further 

 inquiry is necessary. 



Detection of Food. — In most cases the food is seen 

 and the acuteness of the bird's vision is well illustrated by 

 the success with which gulls pick up fragments of biscuit 

 in the white wake of the steamer. Touch plays an im- 

 portant part in birds which feel in the mud for small 

 animals ; thus the snipe's elastic bill is richly innervated. 

 Of smell there is not much evidence except in nocturnal 

 birds of prey, to which blackbird, magpie, rook, and a few 

 more may be added. Longfellow was probably right when 

 he indicated in Hiawatha that it is by sight, not by smell, 

 that the vultures gather to the carcass — 



" Never stoops the soaring \ailture 

 On his quarry in the desert, 

 On the sick or wounded bison, 

 But another vulture, watching 

 From his high aerial look-out. 

 Sees the downward plunge and follows ; 

 And a third pursues the second, 

 Coming from the invisible ether, 

 First a speck, and then a vulture, 

 Till the air is dark with pinions. 



So disasters come not singly ..." 



Modes of Food-Capture. — An endless succession of 

 pictures passes through the mind : the swift rushing through 



