Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/222

Rh of their toes, we should not suspect they were so intimately connected with the more typical groups of the tribe as they undoubtedly are. They neither use their bill for climbing, like the Parrots, nor for making holes in trees, like the Woodpeckers; neither can they mount the perpendicular stems like the Certhiadæ or Creepers; and yet they decidedly climb, although in a manner peculiar to themselves. Having frequently seen different species of the Brazilian Cuckoos in their native forests, I may safely affirm that they climb in all other directions than that of the perpendicular. Their flight is so feeble from the extreme shortness of their wings, that it is evidently performed with difficulty, and it is never exercised but to convey them from one tree to another, and these flights in the thickly wooded tracts of tropical America are of course very short; they alight upon the highest boughs, and immediately begin to explore the horizontal and slanting ramifications with the greatest assiduity, threading the most tangled mazes, and leaving none unexamined. All soft insects inhabiting such situations lying in their route become their prey, and the quantities that are thus destroyed must be very great. In passing from one bough to another they simply hop, without using their wings, and their motions are so quick, that an unpractised observer, even if placed immediately beneath the tree, would soon lose sight of the bird. The Brazilian hunters give to their Cuckoos the general name of Cat's-tail; nor is the epithet inappropriate, for their long hanging tails, no less than their mode of climbing the branches, give them some distant resemblance to that quadruped. I have no doubt that the great