United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One of the first things I got from there was a living specimen of the curious and beautiful racquet-tailed kingfisher. Seeing how much I admired it, they afterwards brought me several more, which wore all caught before daybreak, sleeping in cavities of the rocky banks of the stream.
I also obtained one or two specimens of the fine racquet-tailed kingfisher of Amboyna, Tanysiptera nais, one of the most singular and beautiful of that beautiful family. They belong to that division of the family termed king-hunters, living chiefly on insects and small land-molluscs, which they dart down upon and pick up from the ground, just as a kingfisher picks a fish out of the water.
There were forty-four species of Longicorns among them, and on the last day I took twenty-eight species of Longicorns, of which five were new to me. My boys were less fortunate in shooting. A few of the pretty racquet-tailed kingfishers were also obtained, but in very poor plumage.
The canal is not continued quite through, merely because every spring-tide would throw up just such a sand-bank as now exists. I had been informed that the fine butterfly Ornithoptera priamus was plentiful here, as well as the racquet-tailed kingfisher and the ring-necked lory.
His ammunition consisted of round clay pellets, which he fashioned to the right size by help of a hole in a small tin plate, which he always carried with him. Birds were fairly plentiful in these mountain forests, and I was glad to get one of the interesting racquet-tailed parrots of the genus Prioniturus, that are only found in the Philippines and Celebes.
Word Of The Day