One day I get under a tree where a number of the Great Paradise
birds were assembled, but they were high up in the thickest of
the foliage, and flying and jumping about so continually that I
could get no good view of them.
At length I shot one, but it was
a young specimen, and was entirely of a rich chocolate-brown
colour, without either the metallic green throat or yellow plumes
of the full-grown bird. All that I had yet seen resembled this,
and the natives told me that it would be about two months before
any would be found in full plumage. I still hoped, therefore, to
get some. Their voice is most extraordinary. At early morn,
before the sun has risen, we hear a loud cry of "Wawk-wawk-wawk,
wók-wók-wók," which resounds through the forest, changing its
direction continually. This is the Great Bird of Paradise going
to seek his breakfast. Others soon follow his example; lories and
parroquets cry shrilly, cockatoos scream, king-hunters croak and
bark, and the various smaller birds chirp and whistle their
morning song. As I lie listening to these interesting sounds, I
realize my position as the first European who has ever lived for
months together in the Aru islands, a place which I had hoped
rather than expected ever to visit. I think how many besides my
self have longed to reach these almost fairy realms, and to see
with their own eyes the many wonderful and beautiful things which
I am daily encountering. But now Ali and Baderoon are up and
getting ready their guns and ammunition, and little Brio has his
fire lighted and is boiling my coffee, and I remember that I had
a black cockatoo brought in late last night, which I must skin
immediately, and so I jump up and begin my day's work very
happily.
This cockatoo is the first I have seen, and is a great prize. It
has a rather small and weak body, long weak legs, large wings,
and an enormously developed head, ornamented with a magnificent
crest, and armed with a sharp-pointed hoofed bill of immense size
and strength. The plumage is entirely black, but has all over it
the curious powdery white secretion characteristic of cockatoo.
The cheeks are bare, and of an intense blood-red colour. Instead
of the harsh scream of the white cockatoos, its voice is a
somewhat plaintive whistle. The tongue is a curious organ, being
a slender fleshy cylinder of a deep red colour, terminated by a
horny black plate, furrowed across and somewhat prehensile. 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. again taking the nut in its claws, it inserts
the very long and sharp point of the bill and picks out the
kernel, which is seized hold of, morsel by morsel, by the
extensible tongue. Thus every detail of form. and structure in
the extraordinary bill of this bird seems to have its use, and we
may easily conceive that the black cockatoos have maintained
themselves in competition with their more active and more
numerous white allies, by their power of existing on a kind of
food which no other bird is able to extract from its stony shell.
The species is the Microglossum aterrimum of naturalists.
During the two weeks which I spent in this little settlement, I
had good opportunities of observing the natives at their own
home, and living in their usual manner. There is a great monotony
and uniformity in everyday savage life, and it seemed to me a
more miserable existence than when it had the charm of novelty.
To begin with the most important fact in the existence of
uncivilized peoples - their food - the Aru men have no regular
supply, no staff of life, such as bread, rice, mandiocca, maize,
or sago, which are the daily food of a large proportion of
mankind. They have, however, many sorts of vegetables, plantains,
yams, sweet potatoes, and raw sago; and they chew up vast
quantities of sugar-cane, as well as betel-nuts, gambir, and
tobacco. Those who live on the coast have plenty of fish; but
when inland, as we are here, they only go to the sea
occasionally, and then bring home cockles and other shell-fish by
the boatload. Now and then they get wild pig or kangaroo, but too
rarely to form anything like a regular part of their diet, which
is essentially vegetable; and what is of more importance, as
affecting their health, green, watery vegetables, imperfectly
cooked, and even these in varying and often in sufficient
quantities.
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