United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Naturgeschichte der Vögel Deutschlands, etc. As he is a very good climber, he describes rapid spirals around it, and the falcon cannot in flying trace such small circles. By this method the Colaptes usually escapes. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, New York and Edinburgh, 1831-49. The Fox, who is so ingenious in hunting, is not less so when his own safety is concerned.
In certain other districts, however, this same woodpecker, as Mr. Hudson states, frequents trees, and bores holes in the trunk for its nest. I may mention as another illustration of the varied habits of this genus, that a Mexican Colaptes has been described by De Saussure as boring holes into hard wood in order to lay up a store of acorns.
In a book entitled Problems of Genetics, 1913, Bateson describes several particular cases which show how impossible it is to find any relation at all between the diagnostic characters of certain species or local forms and their mode of life. One of these cases is that of the species of Colaptes, a genus of Woodpeckers in North America, of which a detailed study was published in the Bull. Am. Mus.
Other names are High-holder, Wake-up, Walk-up, Yellowhammer, and Pigeon Woodpecker. The people of Cape Hatteras know it as Wilkrissen, and in some parts of Florida it is the Yucker-bird. Naturalists call it Colaptes auratus, but name it as you may, this bird of many aliases is well worthy of the esteem in which it is held.
Its peripheral portion is hardened by the heat, while the sap in the interior almost entirely disappears. A hollow cylinder with a well-sheltered cavity is thus formed, and the Colaptes proposes to utilise it as a storehouse. His acorns will there be well protected against external influences and against the birds whose beaks are too weak to pierce the agave.
But it is in deciding the question as to where they are to be laid up that the Colaptes shows his remarkable intelligence. In the forests where he lives are to be found aloes, yuccas, and agaves. When the agaves have flowered, the flower-bearing stem, two or three metres in length, shrivels, but remains standing for some time.
The beak, however, is not so straight or so strong as in the typical woodpeckers but it is strong enough to bore into wood. Hence this Colaptes, in all the essential parts of its structure, is a woodpecker.
Acad. Nat. Sc. Philadelphia, 2nd Series, vol. ii., 1853, p. 259. A relation of this bird, the Colaptes mexicanus, does not yield to him in economy and skill. He places his barn in the interior of a plant which is very abundant in the zone he inhabits. Insectivorous during a part of the year, he is forced to renounce this diet during the dry season.
Word Of The Day