CHAPTER V 



BACKGROUND-PICTURING ON OB LITERATI VELY SHADED BIRDS, CONTINUED. 



SECOND TYPE, INTENSELY ELABORATE PICTURING OF THE MINUTE 



DETAILS OF THE NEAR GROUND, ON TERRESTRIAL BIRDS 



fT^HERE are two main types of intricate-pattern background-picturing, 



^ as there are two classes of minute forms and markings in field and 

 forest landscape. The one consists of the actually minute markings of the 

 various inanimate objects, such as leaves, logs, sticks, stones, grasses, etc., 

 seen at very close range; and the other of the cruder forms of large objects and 

 groups of objects, such as tree-trunks and branches, and sky- vistas, reduced 

 and refined by distance into a delicate pattern. 



Marvelously fine and intricate patterns, rendering with almost microscopic 

 minuteness the aspect of dead leaf and mossy log surfaces, seen at extremely 

 close range, with an admixture of somewhat more distant ground-vista pictur- 

 ing, are worn by such birds as the terrestrial forest Goatsuckers (Caprimulgidce), 

 which are almost unique among birds in their evident extreme dependence 

 on obliterative coloration. Squatting motionless on or near the ground in 

 the depths of shady forests, they take wing only as a last resort, when almost 

 trodden upon by an enemy. In conformity with this habit, their obliterative 

 pattern is developed to a point of minutely detailed realism quite beyond 

 that of such well-concealed ground birds even as the American Woodcock. 

 It is as if the Woodcock wore an adequately true facsimile of the main effect 

 of its dead leaf and stick background, with the smaller markings of these ob- 

 jects largely omitted, while the Goatsucker wears a similar pattern-picture 

 carried out to the last degree of finish, with all possible minute details faith- 

 fully represented. The intricate bark- and lichen-pattern of the surface of a 

 fallen log, the reticulations of dead leaves, — all the innumerable delicate mark- 



35 



