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Updated: July 17, 2025
These birds fly in large flocks, and commit great ravages on the corn-fields. In the same localities the curious boat-bill heron is found, its short thick neck and enormous beak giving it a clumsy, ungainly look alongside the elegant flamingo. The beak may be likened to two boats, laid one upon the other, gunwale to gunwale, the upper part of the mandible representing the keel.
His crown and nape are black, then a white band runs back from the base of the upper mandible to the hind neck, and below this a black stripe reaches back in a parallel direction and encloses the eye. His upper parts, save those mentioned, are bluish gray.
The resin-kneading females have the edge of the mandible not toothed, but simply curved; the tip alone, preceded by a notch which is pretty clearly marked in some species, forms a real tooth; but this tooth is blunt and does not project. The mandible, in short, is a kind of spoon perfectly fitted to remove the sticky matter and to shape it into a ball.
In the genus Prion, a member of the distinct family of the Petrels, the upper mandible alone is furnished with lamellae, which are well developed and project beneath the margin; so that the beak of this bird resembles in this respect the mouth of a whale.
The struggle between the two ferocious warriors disputing oceanic dominion was usually brief and deadly, the mandible battling with the sucker; the solid and cutting equipment of teeth with the phosphorescent mucosity incessantly slipping by and opposing the blow of the demolishing head like a battering ram, with the lashing blow of tentacles thicker and heavier than an elephant's trunk.
In birds generally the upper mandible is more or less joined to the skull, leaving only the lower jaw free to move. But in the parrot the upper mandible is also hinged, so that each plays freely on the other. The upper, as we all know, is hooked and pointed; the lower has a sharp edge. The tongue is thick, muscular, and sensitive.
In the second place, a duck's tongue is a very short and stiff affair, and is fixed in the lower mandible as in a trough. Ducks do not protrude the tongue when they feed; they cannot protrude it; and if a duck can crush a mussel-shell with its beak, what better position could it have the bivalve in than fast to the tongue between the upper and the lower mandible?
The cause of this power in the beak is that, in order to enable it to climb about more easily, the upper mandible, or bone, instead of forming a continuation as it were of the skull bone, as in other birds, is united by a membrane which enables it to raise or depress the beak at its pleasure. This gives much greater force to its power of grasping.
Indeed, how could he imagine that a dwelling was hollowed out, at that height, in the solid granite. From Claw Cape to the Mandible Capes, in all the extent of Union Bay, there was nothing to lead him to suppose that the island was or could be inhabited. At eight o'clock, however, the colonists observed a movement on board the Speedy. A boat was lowered, and seven men jumped into her.
Then, all standing aside for fear of its bursting, the match was lighted by means of a long cord. A tremendous report was heard, but the piece had held good, and the colonists rushing to the windows, saw the shot graze the rocks of Mandible Cape, nearly five miles from Granite House, and disappear in Shark Gulf.
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