The
Whole Tongue Has A Considerable Extensile Power.
I will here
relate something of the habits of this bird, with which I have
since become acquainted.
It frequents the lower parts of the
forest, and is seen singly, or at most two or three together. It
flies slowly and noiselessly, and may be killed by a
comparatively slight wound. It eats various fruits arid seeds,
but seems more particularly attached to the kernel of the kanary-
nut, which grows on a lofty forest tree (Canarium commune),
abundant in the islands where this bird is found; and the manner
in which it gets at these seeds shows a correlation of structure
and habits, which would point out the "kanary" as its special
food. The shell of this nut is so excessively hard that only a
heavy hammer will crack it; it is somewhat triangular, and the
outside is quite smooth. The manner in which the bird opens these
nuts is very curious. Taking one endways in its bill and keeping
it firm by a pressure of the tongue, it cuts a transverse notch
by a lateral sawing motion of the sharp-edged lower mandible.
This done, it takes hold of the nut with its foot, and biting off
a piece of leaf retains it in the deep notch of the upper
mandible, and again seizing the nut, which is prevented from
slipping by the elastic tissue of the leaf, fixes the edge of the
lower mandible in the notch, and by a powerful nip breaks of a
piece of the shell.
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