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Updated: May 14, 2025
The screaming of their companion which he had killed having ceased, they remounted the trees; and before he could reload his gun, which he had left at a little distance, they had all disappeared. He possessed a tame toucan of one of the large species, which was allowed to go free about the house.
When asleep, the Toucan takes great care of its bill, covering it nicely with the back plumage, so that the whole bird looks like a great round ball of feathers. Its body is about eighteen inches long. Next uncle Brown showed Charley a bird, called the Parrakeet.
The Toucan once formed part of the savage regalia of the Indian caciques of the country, and upon the establishment of the empire, was symbolically retained by the Portuguese sovereigns. His Imperial Majesty was yet in his youth; rather corpulent, if anything, with a care-free, pleasant face, and a polite, indifferent, and easy address. His manners, indeed, were entirely unexceptionable.
Were a specimen of each species of the toucan presented to you, you would pronounce the bill of the bouradi the most rich and beautiful: on the ridge of the upper mandible a broad stripe of most lovely yellow extends from the head to the point; a stripe of the same breadth, though somewhat deeper yellow, falls from it at right angles next the head down to the edge of the mandible; then follows a black stripe, half as broad, falling at right angles from the ridge and running narrower along the edge to within half an inch of the point.
No one, on seeing a Toucan, can help asking what is the use of the enormous bill, which, in some species, attains a length of seven inches, and a width of more than two inches. A few remarks on this subject may be here introduced.
None of the smaller species utter the loud yelping notes of the larger. The cries of the curly-crested toucan are very singular, resembling somewhat the croaking of frogs. Mr Bates had one day wounded one; and on attempting to seize it, it set up a loud scream.
But the food was unknown to him so he ignored it. Myla seemed offended at his refusal and proceeded to devour the berries without ceremony. An hour later the monkey's sharp eyes detected the nest of a toucan made in the hollow of a thick branch. An opening much like the doorway to a woodpecker's abode led into a spacious cavity on the bottom of which reposed two fat, ugly fledgelings.
"What! the bird is in that hole where we saw the white thing sticking out? Why, it quite filled the hole, and if there's a bird there, and what we saw be its bill, I have only to say that its bill must be as big as its body else how can it get out and in through so small an aperture? Certainly I see no hole but the one. Oh! perhaps the bird is a toucan.
The proportions of the cassique are so fine, that he may be said to be a model of symmetry in ornithology. On each wing he has a bright yellow spot, and his rump, belly, and half the tail are of the same colour. All the rest of the body is black. His beak is the colour of sulphur, but it fades in death, and requires the same operation as the bill of the toucan to make it keep its colours.
The surface of the lake swarms with an astonishing variety of water-fowl; such as black swan, duck, ibis sacra cranes, pelicans; and soaring above on the look-out for their prey are fish-eagles and hawks, while the neighbourhood is resonant with the loud chirps of the guinea-fowls calling for their young, with the harsh cry of the toucan, the cooing of the pigeon, and the "to-whit, to-whoo" of the owl.
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