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Updated: May 14, 2025
It seems wonderful at first sight that any creature should be encumbered with so huge a beak; but the toucan knows well how to use it. Though of great size, it is of light structure, and serrated at the edges. In some species it attains to a length of seven inches, and a width of more than two inches.
If they had been as well acquainted with geography as some assert, if even any astronomer had travelled as far south as the equator, we should certainly have had pictured in the old star charts some constellations in that region of the heavens wherein modern astronomers have placed the Octant, the Bird of Paradise, the Sword-fish, the Flying-fish, Toucan, the Net, and other uncelestial objects.
When we speak in Europe of a native of Guiana, we figure to ourselves a man whose head and waist are decorated with the fine feathers of the macaw, the toucan, and the humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors have long since regarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks of an American.
The chief wears a headdress or cap made by fixing the breast-feathers of the Toucan on a web of Bromelia twine, with erect tail plumes of macaws rising from the crown. The cinctures of the arms and legs are also then ornamented with bunches of feathers.
But, talking of a high chair, when you say those chaffy things in a voice like Jane's, and just as Jane would have said them oh, my wig! Do you know, that is the duchess's only original little swear. All the rest are quotations. And when she says: 'My wig! we all try not to look at it. It is usually slightly awry. The toucan tweaks it. He is so very LOVING, dear bird!"
If they wish to deceive the ears of the great Falcons who watch them or is it simple amusement? they interrupt their own song to introduce the most varied melodies. If a sheep bleats, the bird immediately replies to the bleating; the clucking of a turkey, the cackling of a goose, the cry of the toucan are noted and faithfully reproduced.
Thus we have seen that the sculptured representation of three birds, totally dissimilar from each other, and not only not resembling the toucan, but conveying no conceivable hint of that very marked bird, formed the basis of Squier and Davis' speculations as to the presence of the toucan in the mounds.
"George!" he thought to himself, stepping back; "she might do it, too perhaps she has." He could not hear anything save the odd chattering of a toucan aroused by the light she had switched on. Perspiration stood out on his brow. He shook the knob, pushed a bell for a servant, called for keys which had been made for every door, called for a chisel and hammer.
It lives on the fruits and seeds which nature has provided in the forest; but wherever human habitations are found, it delights to take up its station on a tree close by, and there, for hours together, pour forth a succession of imitative notes. Its own song is sweet, but very short. If a toucan is yelping in the neighbourhood, it drops its own note and imitates the huge-beaked bird.
The largest of that region is Cuvier's toucan, and is distinguished from its nearest relatives by the feathers at the bottom of the back being of a saffron hue instead of red. It lays its eggs in hollows of trees, at a great height from the ground, and moults between March and June.
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