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Updated: June 11, 2025
And then the fashion of making natural history collections has much extended of recent years: so much so, that many blame too ardent collectors for the increasing rarity of birds like the crossbill, waxwing, hoopoe, golden oriole, and others which seem to have once visited this country more commonly than at present.
Perhaps it is even more like the uk-uk-uk of the hoopoe repeated very loudly. It may be syllabised as cuck-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Not very much is known about the habits of this species. It is believed to victimise chiefly willow-warblers. Blanford speaks of its call as a fine melodious whistle. I would not describe the note as a whistle.
In the numerous tree-creeping groups, which, seem as unrelated to the oven-bird as the woodpecker is to the hoopoe, we find a score of wonderfully different forms of beak; but many of them retain the probing character, and are actually used to probe in rotten wood on trees, and to explore the holes and deep crevices in the trunk.
Elsewhere, as in Iceland, Normandy, and ancient Greece, the bird is an eagle, a swallow, an ostrich, or a hoopoe. In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir, or "raven-stone," also renders its possessor invisible, a property which it shares with one of the treasure-finding plants, the fern.
According to the Swiss version of the story it is the hoopoe that brings the spring-wort, a bird also endowed with mystic virtues, while in Iceland, Normandy, and ancient Greece it is an eagle, a swallow, or an ostrich.
Every bird for miles around was singing: blackbirds sounded like England, wood-pigeons cooed, cuckoos insisted, and among them all, strange and Indian, a hoopoe called. The sun climbed up behind the saint-house and solitary palm; the olives began to cast shadows; the grass was silver with dew. We breakfasted soon after six, our table out on the green lawn. Such air and scents of moist earth!
The bird rose skyward, uttered his cry, and flew away, followed by all the other birds. And they came to Kitor in the land of Sheba. It was morning, and the queen had gone forth to pay worship to the sun. Suddenly the birds darkened his light. The queen raised her hand, and rent her garment, and was sore astonished. Then the hoopoe alighted near her.
It would pay, as well as be interesting, as I remarked in a note to the 'Star' in reference to this occurrence of the pair of Hoopoe's, to encourage these birds to breed in the Islands whenever they shewed a disposition to do so, as, though rather a foul-feeder and of unsavoury habits in its nest, and having no respect for sanitary arrangements, the Hoopoe is nevertheless one of the most useful birds in the garden.
The crowd was so great that one of the ants said to his fellows, "Get you at once into your ant-homes, or you will be trampled to death by one of these myriad feet." Solomon, one day reviewing his varied troops, missed among the birds the hoopoe, and asked whither this bird had gone, threatening all manner of punishments for his absence.
He has discovered your absence and in his righteous anger will punish you severely." "Lead me to him," replied the Hoopoe. "I know that he will forgive me when he hears where I have been and what I have to tell him." The Eagle led him to the King, who with a wrathful face was sitting on his throne.
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