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Updated: May 16, 2025
The kingbird is sometimes called the "bee martin" because he occasionally snaps up the drones. All our insectivorous birds prey upon the flies; the swallows sweep them up in the air, the swifts scoop them in, while, besides the so-called flycatchers, the cedar-birds, the thrushes, the vireos, and all other soft-billed birds, subsist more or less upon them.
Its flight also, instead of being direct and rapid, like the course of an arrow, is weak and undulatory, as among the soft-billed birds. It utters a low note, like the clicking together of two small stones. A number of nests are placed so close together as to form one great mass of sticks. These parrots always live in flocks, and commit great ravages on the corn-fields.
You will see that they are soft-billed birds, with a very wide gape and bristles like moustaches at the sides like thin bars to keep in the captives they take." "And what do they capture, sir?" I asked. "Oh, caterpillars and butterflies and moths, Nat. Soft-bodied creatures. Nature has given each bird suitable bills for its work. Mind how you take out that bird. No: don't lift it yet.
Many of the soft-billed birds are songsters; and a discussion in a former chapter should not be forgotten, in which it was shewn that the best songsters are rarely ornamented with bright tints. It would appear that female birds, as a general rule, have selected their mates either for their sweet voices or gay colours, but not for both charms combined.
Its flight also, instead of being direct and rapid, like the course of an arrow, is weak and undulatory, as among the soft-billed birds. It utters a low note, like the clicking together of two small stones. A number of nests are placed so close together as to form one great mass of sticks. These parrots always live in flocks, and commit great ravages on the corn-fields.
It is needless to say we might as well try to keep a bird on pebbles as give hard grain to a soft-billed insect-eating bird; but this kind of cruelty is constantly practised simply from ignorance. I would therefore endeavour to give a few general rules for the guidance of those who have a new pet of some kind, which they wish to domesticate and tame.
Here, as both sexes are equally well protected, we clearly see that the females have not been prevented by natural selection from inheriting the colours of their male parents; so that we must look to the law of sexually-limited transmission. In all parts of the world both sexes of many soft-billed birds, especially those which frequent reeds or sedges, are obscurely coloured.
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