39 2 



TROPICAL AMERICA AND ITS ANIMALS 



Motmots. 





Motmots are entirely restricted to tropical America, a repre- 

 sentative species being the red-bearded Urospatha martii of the 

 district around Veragua. These birds have the strange habit of removing the 

 vanes of the middle pair of elongated tail-feathers for a certain distance, so as to 

 give them a racket-like form very similar to that which occurs naturally in 

 certain kingfishers and humming-birds. Recent observations have shown that the 



length of feather thus 

 devaned is invariably 

 constant, even when 

 the adjacent pair of 

 feathers, which might 

 serve as a guide, has 

 been removed. Fur- 

 ther, the portion des- 

 tined to be stripped 

 has the vanes mark- 

 edly narrower than 

 in the rest of the 

 feather, while the 

 component barbs and 

 barbules are much 

 weaker and less co- 

 herent than elsewhere, 

 so that their removal 

 is a comparatively 

 easy matter. Conse- 

 quently, in the course 

 of the preening to 

 which these birds 

 subject all their tail- 

 feathers, the weak area in the vanes 

 of the middle pair becomes stripped, 

 resulting in the production of the 

 symmetrical pair of terminal rackets. 

 The original cause of the narrowing 

 and degeneration in the affected area 

 is still unknown, but it does not ap- 

 pear to be a case of the inheritance 

 of an acquired character. 

 Motmots represent a family (Momotidce) by themselves, which contains eight 

 generic groups, of which the typical Momotus has about sixteen species. 

 Kingfishers and Among the kingfishers the handsomest species is perhaps the 



woodpeckers, glossy kingfisher (Ceryle amazona) of Brazil, Bolivia, and the 

 Argentine, which is about the size of the green woodpecker, with a metallic 

 green plumage. There are several other South American species of Ceryle, such 

 as the Peruvian C. cabanisi, but the genus itself has a very wide geographical 



RED-BEARDED MOTMOT. 



