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Red-collared lorikeets revel in the nectar, hustling the noisy honey-eaters and the querulous sun-birds. The radiant blue butterfly sips and is gone, or if it be his intent to pause, tightly folds his wings on the instant of settling, and is transformed from a piece of living jewellery to a brown mottled leaf caught edgeways among the red flowers.
It was funny to see the little honey-eaters thrusting in their long beaks again and again in search of the sweet drops they had learned to expect in flowers, and funnier still to watch the air of disgust with which they would give up the attempt. There were doves everywhere not in cages, for they never tried to escape. Their soft "coo" murmured drowsily all around.
Several honey-eaters, the little blue turtle dove, the barred-shouldered dove, the tranquil dove, the nutmeg pigeon, the little bittern, the grey sandpiper, the sordid kingfisher, the spotless egret, the blue heron, the ibis all and others frequent such places, and in their season, butterflies come and go.
Several lists were compiled, the most comprehensive being: Honey-eaters were represented by a dozen or more; but were not so numerous as the sun-birds, which were difficult to accurately enumerate, owing to their sprightly behaviour. The birds were more numerous about eight a.m.
The green and gold butterflies are for ever fluttering and quivering. The complaining lorikeets peevishly nudge them off with red, nectar-dripping bills, the honey-eaters disperse them with inconsiderate wing sweeps; but the butterflies are not to be denied their share. After a moment's airy flight they return to the feast, quivering with eagerness.
Being so, in fact and appearance, it was quite a misfit for Christmas a mere toy with which a gay young horse might condescend to beguile a few loose hours. It was a charming morning. Birds were vulgarly sportful. Honey-eaters whistled among the trees, scrub-fowl chuckled in the jungle.
Such is the silence of the bush that the silken rustle of the butterflies becomes audible and the distinctive flight of birds is recognised not alone such exaggerated differences as the whirr of quail, the bustle of scrub fowl, and the whistle and clacking of nutmeg pigeons, but the delicate and tender characteristics of the wing notes of the meeker kinds of doves and the honey-eaters, and also the calculated flutterings of the fly-catchers.
In her heart of hearts Norah did not believe that mattered very much. The birds were a colony in themselves. There was a big aviary, large enough for little trees and big shrubs to grow in, where a happy family lived whose members included several kinds of honey-eaters, Queensland finches, blackbirds and a dozen other tiny shy things which flitted quickly from bush to bush all day.
Here is a natural aviary. Pigeons and doves coo; honey-eaters whistle; sun-birds whisper quaint, quick notes; wood swallows soar and twitter.
Yet, on the principle that "similar functional requirements frequently lead to the development of similar structures in animals which are otherwise very distinct" as we see in the tubular tongue in honey-eaters and humming birds we might have expected to find in the Dendrocolaptidae a better imitation of the woodpecker in so variable an organ as the beak, if not in the tongue.
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