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The lories, indeed, live entirely on nectar, and they are so common in the region they have made their own that all the larger flowers there have been developed with a special view to their tastes and habits, as well as to the structure of their peculiar brush-like honey-collector.
As to the birds, they swarmed among the scanty branches of the eucalypti and casuarinas, which did not hinder the display of their wings. Black, white, or gray cockatoos, paroquets, with plumage of all colors, kingfishers of a sparkling green and crowned with red, blue lories, and various other birds appeared on all sides, as through a prism, fluttering about and producing a deafening clamor.
"Hundreds of times better than going to a picnic at Bushey Park, uncle," I said. "But you talked of eating the birds we shot. Thrushes would be good, wouldn't they?" "Delicious, Nat, only so very small." "But you wouldn't eat parrots, uncle, lories, and paroquets, and these sort of birds?"
Lyre birds, argus pheasants, great eagles, and owls from Java, doves, pigeons, lories, and humming birds, the metallic lustre of whose plumage flashes in the light like the sheen of steel. One or two tigers in a cage, of course invite our curiosity.
And the brush-tongued lories, that search for nectar among the bells of Malayan blossoms, are the brightest-coloured of all the parrot tribes. Indeed, no group of birds, according to Mr. 'As a rule, he says, 'parrots may be termed green birds, the majority of the species having this colour as the basis of their plumage, relieved by caps, gorgets, bands and wing-spots of other and brighter hues.
In birds it is almost as peculiar. It has no woodpeckers and no pheasants families which exist in every other part of the world; but instead of them it has the mound-making brush-turkeys, the honeysuckers, the cockatoos, and the brush-tongued lories, which are found nowhere else upon the globe.
But they had no lack of provisions, which was lucky, for there were no animals on the shore, though birds, on the contrary, abound jacamars, couroucous, tragopans, grouse, lories, parrots, cockatoos, pheasants, pigeons, and a hundred others. There was not a tree without a nest, and not a nest which was not full of flapping wings. Towards seven o'clock the weary explorers arrived at Reptile End.
At present they were cackling in chorus with parakeets of every color, with solemn cockatoos that seemed to be pondering some philosophical problem, while bright red lories passed by like pieces of bunting borne on the breeze, in the midst of kalao parrots raucously on the wing, Papuan lories painted the subtlest shades of azure, and a whole variety of delightful winged creatures, none terribly edible.
Looking up, we caught sight of nights of the great bird of paradise, going to seek their breakfasts on the fruit-bearing trees. Lories and parroquets soon afterwards flew off from their perches, uttering shrill cries.
"The bird which escaped us on our first excursion, and from which we gave the name to that part of the forest." "A jacamar!" cried Herbert. It was indeed a jacamar, of which the plumage shines with a metallic luster. A shot brought it to the ground, and Top carried it to the canoe. At the same time half a dozen lories were brought down.
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