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Category Archives: Birds

Birds category

Learning In Animals.

Leibnitz tells of a dog in Germany, that could distinctly pronounce thirty words. Goldsmith informs us that he once heard a raven whistle the tune of the Shamrock, with great distinctness, truth and humor.

Birds.

A robin with a broken wing fell into the hands of a twelve-year-old New Hampshire boy. He took it home and cared for it in a vacant attic till it was able to fly, when he took it out in a basket a mile away in the woods and set it free. the next spring […]

Birds and Telegraph Wires.

The Naturalist publishes some additional evidence relative to the destruction of birds by telegraph wires. An observer writes from Iowa: “Many prairie-chickens [Cupiaonia cupido] are annually destroyed in this way. In December 1868, near Cambridge, Story county, Iowa, I saw many of these birds lying dead in the snow, beneath the line of the telegraph, […]

A Bird Combat.

That trim, gentle-looking, drab-colored bird, erroneously called turtledove by dwellers in the United States, and generally deemed so utterly innocent and pure that to kill it for the table or any other use is branded as heinous in the extreme, is not so innocent after all. Its moaning, sad-sounding, voice is a mockery and a […]

Can Birds Converse?

Dr. Charles C. Abbott cites the following occurrence to show that birds possess some mode of conveying ideas to one another: In the spring of 1872, a pair of cat-birds were noticed carrying material for a nest to a patch of blackberry-briars near by. To test their ingenuity, Dr. Abbott took a long, narrow strip […]

Turkey and Partridge.

     A curious partnership is related as existing at Chelsea, Vt., where a turkey and a partridge are sharing a nest. The turkey continues to deposit her egg daily, although the partidge began to set after laying thirteen. During the occupation of the nest by the turkey the partridge attends to feeding.

A National Taste For Gaming.

     It is a remarkable fact, says the London Times, that a taste for gaming appears in some cases to pervade a whole people, and to become one of the chief national characteristics. Nowhere is this more manifest than among the inhabitants of the Asiatic Islands. Games of hazard are the favorites of these islanders. […]

Strange Instinct in Animals.

     Various interesting facts have been noted in relation to the demeaner of animals pior to a great convulsion. It was towards noon, beneath a clear and almost cloudless sky, with the sea breeze freshly blowing, that the cities of Conseption and Talcahuano, on the coast of South America, were desolated in 1835. At ten […]

The Food of the Robin.

Lieut. Lyle, of the United States Army, has made some interesting observations on the food of the robin. He details in the American Naturalist his experience in feeding young birds and testing their decided preference for beetles and other insects, showing that they ate seeds only when there was a lack of insects and that […]

Birds.

They have on exhibition in St. Louis a cloak made of feathers of quail, prairie chickens, and wild ducks. There are said to be 38,880 feathers, and each feather has from five to eight stitches. It took a lady nearly seven months to make it, and she valued it at $500.