United States or Estonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Coues saw the gulls to Buphogus the sea-hen of the sealers pursue make them disgorge their food, while, on the other side, the gulls and the terns combined to drive away the sea-hen as soon as it came near to their abodes, especially at nesting-time. "To see them attacking a buzzard, a kite, a crow, or an eagle, is one of the most amusing spectacles.

The interest of this story is very considerable, because it shows the imperfect and exhausting efforts which Nature causes animals to make to adapt their breeding time to a new climate. Black swans which are descended from young birds bred in this country conform to the ordinary nesting-time of our hemisphere.

They glean for their scanty board and return to the cold countries, of which they are Citizens, before nesting-time." "Please tell me the names of some of the birds that live here all the time," said Nat. "Have I seen any yet?"

There is a colony of twenty or thirty nests on Marsh Island, Olaf tells me; in my boyhood days there used to be hundreds of them. "In nesting-time a heronry, as such a colony is called, is a very noisy, dirty place; for they do not keep their homes neat and nice, like the tidy land birds. Mr. and Mrs.

The droning of the busy swarm fills the flowery vault, while a snow of petals falls softly to the foot of the tree. Together with the population of harvesters there mingles another, less numerous, of mere drinkers, whose nesting-time has not yet begun. This is the colony of the Osmiae, with their copper-coloured skin and bright-red fleece.

I'll wait till I catch sight of the gull that makes that noise, and next nesting-time I'll watch for some of the same kind and get two or three of the young ones to bring up. If they can say what sounds something like `Ahoy! so plainly it ought to be possible to teach one to say more."

There at sunset in nesting-time one of the rails will begin to call a loud, clapping roll; a neighbor takes it up, then another and another, the circle of cries widening and swelling until the whole marsh is a-clatter. Heading my way with a slow, labored stroke came one of the fish-hawks. She was low down and some distance away, so that I got behind a post before she saw me.

In their places were other birds, much smaller birds with wings and no teeth; but something like them, for all that: for their feet also were fitted for swimming and not walking, and they, too, visited the shore little, if at all, except at nesting-time, and they lived upon fish in the water.

They look like one I saw in the miller's woods, and he called it a Bittern." "The striped ones are the young birds, now wearing their first plumage. Bitterns prefer to live in freshwater meadows, or near ponds. They are solitary birds, keeping house in single pairs, and after nesting-time wander about entirely alone." "Isn't it very hard to tell young Night Herons from Bitterns?" asked Nat.

Just look at my hands. Proof positive to him; but not to any one who considers that through the winter, up till nesting-time, these little creatures have been creeping about such thorns and thickets, and that they had no expectation whatever of a hand being thrust into the bushes. The spot which is so difficult of access to a man is to them easy of entrance.