548 
ZYGODACTYLI. 
Peculiarity of food appears wholly to influence the visits 
and residence of this bird, and in plain, champaign, or 
mountainous countries, they are wholly strangers, though 
common along the banks of all the intermediate water- 
courses and lagoons. 
Of their manners at the interesting period of propaga- 
tion and incubation we are not yet satisfactorily inform- 
ed. They nest in hollow trees, and take little, if any 
pains, to provide more than a simple hollow in which to 
lay their eggs, like the Woodpeckers. Several females 
deposit their eggs in the same cavity ; the number laid by 
each is said to be only 2, which are nearly round, and 
of a light greenish-white.* They are, at all times, par- 
ticularly attached to the large sycamores, in the hollow 
trunks of which they roost in close community, and enter 
at the same aperture into which they climb. They are 
said to cling close to the sides of the tree, holding fast 
by the claws and bill ; and into these hollows they often 
retire during the day, either in very warm or inclement 
weather, to sleep or pass away the time in indolent and 
social security, like the Hitpicolasi of the Peruvian caves, 
at length only hastily aroused to forage at the calls of hun- 
ger. Indeed from the swiftness and celerity of their aeri- 
al movements, darting through the gleaming sunshine, 
like so many sylvan cherubs, decked in green and 
gold, it is obvious that their actions as well as their man- 
ners are not calculated for any long endurance ; and shy 
and retiring from all society but that to which they are 
inseparably wedded, they rove abroad with incessant ac- 
tivity, until their wants are gratified, when, hid from 
sight, they again relapse into that indolence which seems 
a relief to their exertions. 
* Audubon-. Orn. Biog. i. p. 339. 
| Cock of the Rock of Peru, which is also somewhat related, apparently, to the Par- 
rots 
