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Updated: May 15, 2025
"Then they ought to taste of spice, uncle," I said, laughing. "Wait a bit, Nat, and you'll see how good these fruit-pigeons are. Now, cut with that great jack-knife of yours a good sharp pair of bamboo skewers, or spits, and we'll soon have the rascals roasting. We can't eat the insects, but we can the birds, and a great treat they will be after so much shipboard food."
Instead of digging for food with its snout as other pigs do, it feeds on fallen fruits from various trees. We saw also a number of butterflies, which Mr Hooker said were peculiar to Celebes. Besides the babirusa, herds of wild pigs of large size abound in the northern forests, and numerous jungle-fowl, hornbills, and great fruit-pigeons.
Yet it must have pleased Babalatchi for he repeated it twice, the second time even in louder tones than at first, causing a disturbance amongst the white rice-birds and the wild fruit-pigeons which roosted on the boughs of the big tree growing in Omar's compound.
We were amused with the vast number of different cockatoos, lories, and parrots, which were secured by strings on bamboo perches in front of the numerous reed huts, all chattering and talking together, as if carrying on some important consultation; while beautiful metallic-green or white fruit-pigeons were uttering their pleasing coos in all directions.
I was fortunate in shooting a couple of great green fruit-pigeons directly afterwards; indeed, in a short time we had as many birds as would supply us for supper and breakfast. We were passing through a wood which consisted chiefly of the great palm, which my uncle said the Malays call the gubbong. The trees were in various conditions.
Fruit would be necessary for the four hundred and forty-two monkeys, for the plantain-eaters, the fruit-pigeons of the Spice Islands that feed on nutmegs, for the toucans and the flocks of parrots, parroquets, cockatoos, and other fruit-eating birds.
Parrots and Tories and cockatoos, of a dozen different binds, were suspended on bamboo perches at the doors of the houses, with metallic green or white fruit-pigeons which cooed musically at noon and eventide.
Australia, with the neighbouring islands, must be a perfect paradise for pigeons, since about half of the species known to science occur in that region only. The wonga-wonga and bronze-wing and great fruit-pigeons are, like the "bald-pates" of Jamaica, all favourite birds with sportsmen, and some of the birds are far more brightly coloured than ours.
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