A History of the Rarer British Birds

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Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman; and Houlston and Son, 1836 - Всего страниц: 101

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Стр. 31 - ... scarce a single vegetable made its appearance. When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from considerable distances visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them. By the Indians a pigeon roost, or breeding place, is considered an important source of national profit and dependence for that season ; and all their active ingenuity is exercised on...
Стр. 31 - These roosting places are always in the woods, and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented one of these places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is surprising. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their dung...
Стр. 31 - ... the ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their dung, all the tender grass and underwood destroyed, the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above another, and the trees themselves, for thousands of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an axe.
Стр. 23 - ... kowe kowe kowe, beginning slowly, but ending so rapidly, that the notes seem to run into each other; and vice versa : he will hear this frequently, without being able to discover the bird or animal from which it proceeds, as it is both shy and solitary, seeking always the thickest foliage for concealment. This is the yellow-billed cuckoo, the subject of the present account.
Стр. 31 - These roosting-places are always in the woods, and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented one of these places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is surprising : the ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their dung, all the tender grass and underwood destroyed, the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds...
Стр. 31 - In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens that having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees in an extensive district, they discover another at the distance perhaps of sixty or eighty miles, to which they regularly repair every morning, and return as regularly in the course of the day, or in the evening, to their place of general rendezvous, or as it is usually called, the roosting place.
Стр. 30 - These fertile and extensive regions abound with the nutritious beech nut, which constitutes the chief food of the wild pigeon. In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens that having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees in an extensive district, they discover another at the...
Стр. 32 - Animals,' shot at Westhall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, on the 31st of December, 1825. The feathers were quite fresh and entire, like those of a wild bird. The specimen in question was presented to Dr. Fleming by the Rev. A. Esplin, schoolmaster at Monymeal.
Стр. 30 - I had then seen of them were mere straggling parties, when compared with the congregated millions which I have since beheld in our western forests, in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and the Indiana territory. These fertile and extensive regions abound with the nutritious beech nut, which constitutes the chief food of the Wild Pigeon.
Стр. 2 - It always appeared to us most extraordinary, indeed unaccountable, that birds of prey could scent carcasses at such immense distances as they are said to do. We were led to scepticism on this subject some twenty years ago, while observing the concourse of birds of prey from every point of the horizon to a corpse floating down the river Ganges, and that during the north-east monsoon, when the wind blew steadily from one point of the compass for months in succession. It...

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