With altered life-habits the numerous divergent
forms originated; some, like Xiphorynchus, retaining a probing beak in a
wonderfully modified form, attenuated in an extreme degree, and bent
like a sickle; others diverging more in the direction of nuthatches and
woodpeckers.
This sketch of the Dendrocolaptidae, necessarily slight and imperfect,
is based on a knowledge of the habits of about sixty species, belonging
to twenty-eight genera: from personal observation I am acquainted with
less than thirty species. It is astonishing to find how little has been
written about these most interesting birds in South America. One
tree-creeper only, Furnarius rufus, the oven-bird _par excellence,_ has
been mentioned, on account of its wonderful architecture, in almost
every general work of natural history published during the present
century; yet the oven-bird does not surpass, or even equal in interest,
many others in this family of nearly three hundred members.
CHAPTER XIX.
MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE.
In reading books of Natural History we meet with numerous instances of
birds possessing the habit of assembling together, in many cases always
at the same spot, to indulge in antics and dancing performances, with or
without the accompaniment of music, vocal or instrumental; and by
instrumental music is here meant all sounds other than vocal made
habitually and during the more or less orderly performances; as, for
instance, drumming and tapping noises; smiting of wings; and humming,
whip-cracking, fan-shutting, grinding, scraping, and horn-blowing
sounds, produced as a rule by the quills.
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