9 8 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



As with human beings, so with birds it is easy to 

 reach the water-side, but not always so easy to obtain a 

 position from which to drink. Men, cattle, and even 

 birds, except the swallows, which often drink on the 

 wing (unless they are only seizing gnats' eggs, which 

 the way that they dip their beaks again and again at 

 the same place seems rather to negative), need proper 

 " watering-places." Even on a river like the Thames 

 you will only find regular birds' drinking-places at 

 considerable intervals, and the same is often the case 

 on small streams if the banks are at all steep, and by the 

 drains of fresh-water marshes. The bird needs a plat- 

 form almost level with the water from which to bend 

 down its head and drink. It also very much dislikes 

 drinking in any place where there is a steep bank 

 behind it. Thus on the Thames cautious birds, such 

 as rooks, pigeons, and peewits, will not drink at the 

 foot of the ordinary steep bank three or four feet high, 

 but nearly always select a cattle watering-place with a 

 smooth adit. Otherwise they are liable to surprise by 

 persons coming suddenly up behind them. 



In the tropical forest it is believed that the birds 

 living on the tops of the gigantic trees find part of their 

 drinking water in the cups of the large pitcher-shaped 

 flowers and fungi which grow on them, in which even 

 small molluscs and other water creatures are found. 



It is a great mistake, and a cause of much uninten- 

 tional cruelty, to think that parrots never drink. They 

 do, and require clean water, and plenty of it. 



Even such desert-loving birds as the sand-grouse fly 

 daily to the drinking-pools. Mr. J. A. Bryden gives a 





