Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The jabiru a splendid bird on the wing also stretches his neck out in front, but there appears to be a slight downward curve at the base of the neck, which may be due merely to the craw. The big slender herons, on the contrary, bend the long neck back in a beautiful curve, so that the head is nearly between the shoulders.
In spite of its small size it was a full-grown male, of a species we had not yet obtained. The antlers had recently been shed, and the new antler growth had just begun. A great jabiru stork let us ride by him a hundred and fifty yards off without thinking it worth while to take flight.
The ground gone over these two last days seems condemned to perpetual solitude and silence. There was not one four-footed animal to be seen, nor even the marks of one. It would have been as silent as midnight, and all as still and unmoved as a monument had not the jabiru in the marsh, and a few vultures soaring over the mountain’s top, shown that it was not quite deserted by animated nature.
A full-foliaged tree of vivid green, its round surface crowded with these birds, as if it had suddenly blossomed with huge white flowers, is a sight worth seeing. Here and there on the sand- bars we saw huge jabiru storks, and once a flock of white wood-ibis among the trees on the bank.
You must make your own bridge across the other three. Probably, were the truth known, these apparently four creeks are only the meanders of one. The jabiru, the largest bird in Guiana, feeds in the marshy savanna through which you have just passed. He is wary and shy, and will not allow you to get within gunshot of him.
He did so, whereupon one young jabiru hastily opened its wings in the desired fashion, at the same time seizing the stick in its bill! It dropped it at once, with an air of comic disappointment, when it found that the stick was not edible. There were many strange birds round about. Toucans were not uncommon. I have never seen any other bird take such grotesque and comic attitudes as the toucan.
This was the jabiru, a species which is fast disappearing, the gigantic crane of the English colonies. This winged creature was five feet high, and his wide, conical, extremely pointed beak, measured eighteen inches in length. The violet and purple tints of his head contrasted vividly with the glossy green of his neck, and the dazzling whiteness of his throat, and the bright red of his long legs.
We went down the Paraguay for a few miles, and then up the Taquary. It was a beautiful trip. The shallow river we were aground several times wound through a vast, marshy plain, with occasional spots of higher land on which trees grew. There were many water-birds. Darters swarmed. But the conspicuous and attractive bird was the stately jabiru stork.
In many catalogues, the word "albatross" stands for the jabiru, a nearly-exterminated species of giant stork, inhabiting South America. "Rhea" often stands for vulture plumage. If the feather dealers had deliberately attempted to form an educational list of the most beautiful and the most interesting birds of the world, they could hardly have done better than they have done in the above list.
You must make your own bridge across the other three. Probably, were the truth known, these apparently four creeks are only the meanders of one. The jabiru, the largest bird in Guiana, feeds in the marshy savanna through which you have just passed. He is wary and shy, and will not allow you to get within gun-shot of him.
Word Of The Day