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All birds by no means possess this particular muscle, but all the perchers have some muscular arrangement in the legs and toes that practically answers the same purpose. If you will bend your wrist backward as far as you can, you will observe that your fingers will have a tendency to curve slightly forward.
Here is still another conundrum for the bird student: Why do the four-toed woodpeckers have two hind digits, despite the fact that they always clamber upward when they take their promenades on the boles and branches of the trees, whereas the agile little nuthatch, which glides upward or downward, as the impulse moves him, has only one rear toe and three in front, like the true perchers?
Her husband has glistening ruby feathers at his throat and green spots on his head and back that glow in the sun like jewels. The highest class of birds is the "perchers," and many friends of yours belong to this. There are two families, however, of perchers, those that call and the song-birds.
Jack Shives's blacksmith shop, off the Main Street of Cedar Mountain, was noted for two things: the sound, all-round work it turned out in the smithy line, and the "perchers," an ever-present delegation of village characters that sat chewing straws as they perched on the shop lumber. Most of them came to hear old Shives talk, for Jack was a philosopher and no subject was out of his field.
There was more than one fiery dispute among the "perchers" of Shives's shop, where Jim was very fond of dropping in. Indeed the smithy was the public forum of the town. Hartigan had very strong views, of the oldest and most conservative type, on the sphere of woman notwithstanding the fact that his mother had been the capable leader of men.
The same is true of the raptorial birds, or birds of prey, which are strong perchers and depend largely for their food supply on clutching their victims while on the wing. In all these birds the hind toe is also well developed, and is on the same plane as the anterior digits a wise adaptation of means to ends.
Lastly, the aquatic birds contribute their portion, by giving this terrestrial bird the power of feeding not only on fish, which are their peculiar food, but actually of occasionally catching it. In this wonderful manner do we find the crow partially invested with the united properties of all other birds, while in its own order, that of the incessores or perchers, it stands the pre-eminent type.
In order that a bird may use his feet with the greatest dexterity in perching and flitting, his digits should be as free and movable as possible; and so we find that the toes of the perchers are usually cleft to the base, are long and slender, easily opened and closed, and possess the power to grasp an object firmly.
They appear to leave the marshes in May, and to take to the woods or bushes. I have never seen them on trees, but upon low shrubs. They do not seem to be climbers, but perchers. I caught one in May, in some low bushes a few rods from the swamp. It perched upon the small twigs like a bird, and would leap about among them, sure of its hold every time. I was first attracted by its piping.
"Absolutely certain," was the answer. "My goodness you are right. I distrusted the whole business from the start. You are right; they fooled us on a stool-pigeon; this whole thing was a put-up job. The simple Red man!" The "perchers" were gathered at the blacksmith shop next afternoon. "Well," said Shives, "I've done fifteen dollars' worth of work to-day and haven't taken in a cent."
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