on Old Friends—a Rcmi?iiscence.



257



identical difference should be observable. The male generally

was a more brilliantly coloured bird, besides being larger and

more solid, and incomparably more talkative and assertive; and

being less fidgety and nervous he kept his flights and tail in very

fair condition. I11 other respects, the plumage of both was

usually in excellent order.


How Dresser and other writers can refer to the notes of

the Bee-eater as being harsh is beyond my comprehension;

manifestly they are totally unacquainted with the song and

home-talk of the species (VIII. pp. 154-5). Those who have no

knowledge of the subject beyond the alarm-call uttered at the

time when these beautiful and most useful creatures are being

butchered are hardly in a position, one feels, to offer an opinion

on the point. The most sweet-voiced Siren that ever was born

might possibly utter a discordant squeal or two were she to find

herself being peppered with small shot in order that her tresses

might be shorn off and exhibited for sale in some fashionable

shop, or on finding herself netted by murderous cannibals as she

came out of her house-door, and with her last sense feeling that

her babes were being left to starvation or to worse. Save, locally,

in the matter of bees, the Bee-eater is one of the most useful

(p. 106) and beautiful of God’s Glorious Creation.


The bill of the deceased male, from the gape, was just

under two inches in length. Occasionally the upper mandible

of both birds has been longer ; but on some two or three occa¬

sions I have had to shorten them as the over-lengthened upper

mandibles hindered the birds when trying to pick up food. In

the wild state, burrowing work would have worn down the

mandibles to a suitable length.


As month succeeded month my two Bee-eaters, little by

little, lost the hereditary and instinctive habit of banging their

bills against the perches in order to kill imaginary wasps and

bees. On the other hand, they learned to drink and wash their

faces freely, almost frequently (but only in a glass suspended

near a perch, never on the ground)—so surely do the habits of

birds become modified and (within limits) adapted to their

surroundings.



