36 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



July, 1906 



Indies, the tody, 

 feeds upon small 

 insects, taken both 

 on the wing and 

 from the foliage, 

 and the bill is wide 

 and long, to bet- 

 ter adapt it to the 

 ready securing of its 

 prey. Both of these 

 birds excavate holes 

 in banks of earth for 

 nesting, for which 

 work their bills form 

 excellent spades. 



The bill of the par- 

 rot is well adapted to 

 its fruit-eating habits, 

 but is also a very useful 

 member in climbing. It is 

 very heavy and strong, with 

 the upper mandible well 

 curved. The tongue of the 

 parrot is also remarkable 

 among bird tongues for 

 the resemblance it bears to 

 the human tongue. This prob- 

 ably accounts for the facility 

 with which these birds learn 

 to articulate words. The food of humming 

 birds consists of two quite different substances, 

 the nectar of flowers and minute insects. Even 

 the latter are taken chiefly from the interior of 

 flowers, and to facilitate the obtaining of this 

 food the birds are equipped with bills taking the form of 

 long, slender tubes, and with tongues of unusual and very 

 interesting structure. 



In the tyrant flycatchers, comprising the kingbird, 

 crested flycatcher, least flycatcher, woodpewee and others, a 

 rather typically formed bill is considerably widened, tending 

 to rende~ more easy the capturing of insects on the wing. 



Dowitcher 



Black Bellied'Plover 



Mourning Dove 



Tody 



Roseate Tern 



The typical woodpecker bill is a very efficient chisel, accom- 

 panied by a tongue which acts as a probe. This structure 

 finds its highest perfection in the ivory-billed and pileated 

 woodpeckers, while the flicker, feeding much of the time 



in the manner of the meadow lark, and nesting usually only 

 in the softest of dead wood, has a bill shaped more like that 

 of a meadow lark than that of other woodpeckers. 



Intermediate between these two forms come the downy and 

 red-head, with many other species. A peculiar construction, 

 permitting of the extreme protrusion of the tongue in wood- 

 peckers, is the great length of the roots of that organ, in 

 some species extending from the base of the tongue around 

 the back of the head, on either side of the neck, over the top 

 of the skull, with the ends resting close to the base of the 

 upper mandible. 



Among the smaller birds, as a rule, the more the food con- 

 sists of seeds and vegetable matter the more the bill tends to 

 a heavy, short, conical shape, while those species feeding 

 more exclusively on insects tend to have more slender, 

 elongated, conical shaped bills, in some species more or less 

 decurved. In the grosbeaks, some species of the tanagers. 

 and some of the southern sparrows, the seed-eating type of 

 bill finds its most extreme proportions. The warblers are 

 among the birds exhibiting the other extreme, with the thrash- 

 ers, wrens, and creepers, as examples of the decurved form 

 of bill. 



One remarkable example of the surprising manner in which 

 nature secures for her creatures that structure best adapted 

 to their needs is shown in the case of the crossbill. One un- 

 familiar with the bird's method of feeding would suppose 

 that it would be fatally hampered in eating by the crossed 

 mandibles, but after having watched the dexterity and 

 rapidity with which the bird extracts the seeds from cones 

 (its principal food), one will readily agree that the bill is 

 shaped to its needs. 



