THE WOODPECKERS. 
229 
nest in rocks or hollow trees. Our only parrot is the Caro- 
lina parroquet {Conuriis Caroliimisis, Fig. 268), which is 
confined to Florida. It formerly extended to the Great 
Lakes and to New York, but is nearly exterminated. About 
three hundred and fifty species are scattered through trop- 
ical countries, Australia and South America being espe- 
cially favored by these gorgeous birds. The ground parrot 
of New Zealand does not fly, all the others being good fliers. 
Order 10. P^car^«? (Woodpeckers, etc.). — This is a some- 
what miscellaneous group of birds, comprising the w^ood- 
peckers, the cuckoos, and allies, with the swifts and hum- 
ming-birds, which connect the preceding groups with the 
Passerine or singing birds. From the latter the PicaricB 
commonly differ in the form of the sternum, in the less 
developed vocal apparatus, there being no more than three 
pairs of separate muscles, so that the birds are not musi- 
cal; as well as in the nature of the toes and wing- and tail- 
feathers. 
The woodpeckers usually have pointed, stiff tail-feathers, 
and the bill is straight and strong. The tongue is long, 
flat, horny, and barbed at the end, and can be usually 
darted out with great force, so that the bird can make holes 
in the bark of trees and draw out with its barbed tongue 
the larvae of insects boring under the bark; in this way 
these birds render us signal service. The tongue, as in all 
vertebrates, is supported by the hyoid apparatus, especially 
by two cartilaginous appendages to the hyoid bone, called 
the horns. These in the woodpeckers, when fully de- 
veloped, are curved into wide arches, each horn making a 
loop down the neck, and thence bending upward, sliding 
around the skull, and even down on the forehead. Through 
a peculiar muscular arrangement of the sheaths in which 
the horns slide, they can be retracted down on the occiput, 
and work as springs on the base of the tongue, forcing it 
out with great velocity. Lindahl has noticed in some Euro- 
pean woodpeckers an unsymmetrio arrangement of the 
iiorias as indicated in Fig. 269, 
