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Updated: May 11, 2025
He had models made, as large as swords, of the different quill-feathers, to experiment on their action and resistance to the air.
It is about a foot in length, clothed in a dark drab suit with a silken greenish gloss. A ruddy cinnamon tints the quill-feathers of the wings; and the tail consists partly of black feathers tipped with white, the two outer ones being of the same tint as the back. The under surface is a pure white. It has a long curved bill of a greyish-black above, and yellow beneath.
At the fourth shot the leader swerved as before, and then kept on his way. "You might as well try to kill them a mile off, as at that distance," said Kennedy, disparagingly. "I hit a bird in that flock, and I think the leader, at that; for I heard the rap of the ball as it struck. It may have been only through his quill-feathers. No; there's the bird I hit. See, he can't keep up with the flock."
In the latter, the end of the wing answers to the thumb and two fingers of my hand; but the metacarpal bones, or those which answer to the bones of the fingers which lie in the palm of the hand, are fused together into one mass; and the whole apparatus, except the last joints of the thumb, is bound up in a sheath of integument, while the edge of the hand carries the principal quill-feathers.
He may know it by the glossy black colour, tinged with grey, of its body; the greater wing-coverts, except at the base and tips, and the quill-feathers being mostly white. Round the neck is a white ruff of down; the skin of the head and neck is excessively wrinkled, and is of a dull reddish colour with a tinge of purple.
This sort shake their Wings as they fly, and rise commonly in a circular manner in their flight; the Males for the most part rising higher than the Females, and frequently falling and flapping them with their Wings, which produces a noise that one may hear a great way; from whence it happens that their Quill-Feathers are commonly broken or shatter'd.
The Helmet is another kind of Pigeon distinguish'd from the others, because it has the Head, the Quill-Feathers, and the Tail-Feathers always of one colour: Sometimes black, sometimes white, or red, or blue, or yellow; but the other Feathers of the Body are of a different colour.
Of late years, however, they have become much more uncommon, though, as he adds, specimens have been shot within the last three or four years. They seem now, however, to be confined to occasional autumnal and winter visitants. Mr. I had also part of some of the quill-feathers of a Bittern sent to me for identification by Mrs.
In the latter, the end of the wing answers to the thumb and two fingers of my hand; but the metacarpal bones, or those which answer to the bones of the fingers which lie in the palm of the hand, are fused together into one mass; and the whole apparatus, except the last joints of the thumb, is bound up in a sheath of integument, while the edge of the hand carries the principal quill-feathers.
This distinction, however, is not perfectly clear in young birds; but, at any age or in any state of plumage, the birds may be immediately distinguished by the primary quill-feathers, which in the American Bittern are a uniform dark chocolate-brown without any marks whatever, while in the Common Bittern they are much marked and streaked with pale yellowish brown; this may be always relied on at any age or in any plumage.
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