BIRDS 



305 



,/:««».• 



Sandhill crane, showing habitat. From mounted group at the American Museum of 



Natural History. 



the feet webbed, the wings are often adapted for long and swift flight. 

 In this division are placed the gulls, terns, ducks, geese, loons, auks, and 

 puffins. 



Other Orders. — Other orders of birds which we are likely to see and 

 recognize may be mentioned. They include the doves, the only remaining 

 native representative being the mourning dove ; the woodpeckers, strong and 

 long of bill, the friend of the lumberman as a savior of the trees from boring 

 pests which live under the bark ; the swifts and humming birds, the latter 

 among the tiniest of all vertebrate animals: and the parrots, of which we 

 have only one native form, the Carolina paroquet (Conurus carolinensis) . 

 This bird once had a range north as far as the Great Lakes; now it is found 

 only in South America. 



Relationship of Birds and Reptiles. — The birds afford an interesting 

 example of how the history of past ages of the earth has given us a clew to 

 the structural relation which birds bear to other animals. Several years 



hunter's BIOL. — 20 



