GOATSUCKERS. 



53 



The Guacharo, or Trinidad Goatsucker {Steatomis Caripensis) — 

 known in the tropical regions of America as the " Oil-Bird" — is about the size 

 of a pigeon. Unhke the other species of goatsuckers, the Guacharos feed 

 entirely upon fruits and seeds. For the sake of the oil which they furnish, 

 numbers of the young are destroyed every year. The nestlings are immediately 

 opened, and the fat removed from them ; it is afterwards melted in clay pots 

 and stored up for use. The oil thus obtained is semi-fluid, transparent, and 

 inodorous, and so pure that it may be kept more than a year without becom- 

 ing rancid. The most noted locality for this oil harvest is a cavern at Caripe, 

 called the " Cueva del Guacharo." Into this cave, as we are told by Humboldt, 

 the Indians enter once a year, about the festival of St. John. They take with 

 them long poles, with which they destroy all the nests within reach, and thus 

 kill many thousands of the young brood, while the poor oil-birds — as if to 

 defend their nestlings— sail over the heads of their assailants, uttering the 

 most discordant cries. 



This celebrated cavern is pierced in a vertical rock ; its entrance measures 

 eighty feet in width and seventy-two in height, while through its gloomy laby- 

 rinths there runs, far removed from the light of day, a subterranean torrent. 

 For a distance of upwards of four hundred feet the daylight still struggles 

 with the darkness, and the seeds brought in by the birds to feed their young, 

 but accidentally dropped by the way, germinate in the scanty soil of the floor, 

 producing etiolated shoots, which might be taken for the phantoms of plants 

 banished from the outer world. Farther in, the loud and discordant cries of 

 the Guacharos are heard, repeated and increased by the echoes on every side. 

 The seeds found in the crops of the young birds are supposed by the Indians 

 to possess medicinal virtues, and are carefully preserved under the name of 

 " Semilla del Guacharo." 



Siib-Faviily II. 

 THE GOATSUCKERS PROPER. CAPRIMULGIN/E. 



General Characteristics. — Bill short and weak, with the gape extending under 

 each eye, extremely broad, and furnished with more or less lengthened bristles ; 

 the wings long and usually pointed ; the tail more or less lengthened, and round 

 or graduated, and sometimes forked ; the tarsi more or less short, and almost clothed 

 throughout with short plumes, or entirely denuded and scaled ; the toes moderate, 

 with the lateral ones shorter than the middle toe, and of equal length ; the claws of 

 the middle toe large and pectinated on the sides — those of the other toes small. 



The Goatsuckers constitute a very numerous race, distributed 

 in all parts of the habitable world. They are migratory, and 

 generally live in woods or on dry tracts of habitable land ; they 

 feed on moths and beetles, which they catch on the wing, either 

 in the dusk of the evening or at early dawn, retiring to some 

 dark retreat among the brushwood during the day. When seizing 

 prey, their mouth is widely opened, and the long rigid hairs with 

 which its base is surrounded materially assist in the capture of 

 insects. The flight of these birds is exceeding rapid, and accom- 

 panied by graceful evolutions similar to those of the swallow, but 



