BIRDS
And I saw an angel standing in the sun: and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God.
—Revelation 19:17
441 Number Of Kinds Of Birds
There are about 8,600 kinds of birds in the world. And of all the known creatures on earth, only birds and men sing. Some examples follow:
442 Teaching Canaries To Sing
In the Hartz Mountains, at the village of Andreasberg, over 200,000 canaries are raised annually. The Germans are especially fond of these pretty songsters and very successful in their propagation and nurture. But their best singers are never sold. They are kept as choirmasters for the feathered vocalists. Handsome and promising fledglings are kept close to the acknowledged leaders of the aviary, and they pick up and practice the notes they hear.
443 Change Of Repertoire For Alaskan Parrot
In Carcross, Yukon Territories, there is a parrot at least 125 years old. The Carcross Parrot, as he is known, has been in the Yukon at least since 1898, and has lived in the Caribou Hotel since 1918.
“The time was,” writes Dennis Bell, “when the Carcross Parrot had a reputation as one of the most formidable drinkers in the north. Tipsy miners used to stagger out of the adjoining beer parlour and slip him a short beer or a scotch.”
But the parrot got religion. Writes Bell: “A few owners ago, the hotel was run by a man of piety who toned down the Carcross Parrot’s purple prose and cut off his booze ration.”
According to the locals, the former owner patiently taught the bird several verses of “’Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and eventually eliminated the somewhat racy sea shanties from his repertoire.
—Prairie Overcomer
444 Chicken Talk
The hen has four different calls to her brood: one when twilight begins to darken toward night; another when she has come across some for their food; another for danger, when the hawk is hovering in the air; and yet another of yearning desire.
—F. B Meyer
445 Secondhand Talk Of Mockingbird
The mockingbird has a song of its own, but it rarely uses it. Instead, it simply mocks the other birds near it. Whatever it hears, it repeats. If it hears the pleasant notes of a house wren, it repeats those pleasant notes. If it hears the plaintive scold of bluejay, it scolds like the bluejay. Whatever else may be said for the mockingbird, anything it has to say is secondhand.
—Carl C. Williams
446 Piped-In Birdcalls
A Tokyo hotel, the New Otani, claims that birdcalls are “among the most relaxing and restful sounds in the world.” Guests who agree can pipe them in on a recording hooked to the room radio.
—Anthony
447 Birds Sucked Into Jet
A DC-10 jumbo jetliner bound for Saudi Arabia with airline personnel to man charter flights for Arab pilgrims burst into flames on take-off at Kennedy International Airport when a flock of birds was sucked into an engine.
The pilot halted the takeoff in a cloud of black smoke and flying tires, saving all 129 passengers and 10 crewmen aboard from serious injury.
—United Press International
448 A Bird Did It
But another transatlantic jet airliner circling over Boston airport, ready to land, did not make it. While scores of horrified persons watched, the huge plane went out of control and slammed into the ground. More than one hundred people died in the flaming crash! Detectives examined every bit of wreckage in an effort to reconstruct the tragedy. At last they announced their findings. The crash had been caused by a bird, probably a sea gull. It had been sucked into the jet engine, causing the craft to go out of control.
449 Chain Reaction From Vulture
In Calcutta, India, a vulture hovering over the city caused two Indian air force fighters to collide and spin into the crowded city, killing nine persons and injuring thirty-seven. The vulture flew into the path of six planes flying in formation over the city. The bird hit one and caused it to crash into another plane, according to the pilot of the second plane, who managed to jump clear. The pilot of the first was killed. One plane hit the grounds of a hospital, injuring members of the staff and their children. The other hit a city building partially destroying it and trapping victims in debris.
450 Sparrow’s Twig Caused Power Failure
“A sparrow that dropped a small twig at an electrical station caused a 26-minute power failure in Weslaco, Texas. Dick Norton, manager of Central Power and Light Co., said that when the twig hit an insulator it caused a 69,000-volt flashover which destroyed three insulators and blew out two 69,000-volt fuses.”
—The Calgary Herald
451 A Town Eggs The Birds
The town of Whitby, England, has a problem. “Huge flocks of gulls have become a major nuisance, their shrieking keeping people from sleeping and their droppings plastering the pavements and splattering the people” (Chicago Daily News).
Town officials, however, think they have a solution. They plan to raid the nests of the seagulls and snatch away their eggs. In their place they are going to put hard-boiled chicken eggs. “The idea is that the goofy gulls won’t know the difference, and will sit there forever trying to hatch the hard-boiled eggs instead of laying new ones of their own.”
452 Smallest Birds Yet Terrible
The smallest-known bird is the hummingbird. It is found only in the New World, of which it is a native. It ranges from the Straits of Magellan, at the southern tip of South America, to Alaska. There are 488 different kinds of these birds.
The smallest hummingbird is found in Cuba, and its body is about one-and-one-fourth inches long.
Hummingbirds have very ugly tempers. There is scarcely anything that can exceed their fierceness when they are disturbed during the mating season. They attack intruders with bewildering courage for such tiny creatures, and they seem to be absolutely fearless.
WHEN GOD PERMITS THE BIRDS OF THE SKIES TO “FEAST” ON THE TRIBULATIONAL EARTH, THERE WOULD BE NO LACK OF APPETITE AND ENDURANCE AMONG THESE CREATURES
453 Largest And Smallest Birds
The largest known bird is the North African ostrich, weighing up to 345 lbs and growing to 9 feet tall. However, it is flightless. The smallest bird is the bee hummingbird of Cuba—2 inches long with a 1.1-inch wingspan.
454 Voracious Birds
A chickadee has been known to eat 5500 cankerworms in a day; a robin, fifteen worms in an hour. An owl devoured ten mice in a night; a hummingbird feeds its young up to sixty insects a day. Young birds gobble up their weight in food each of the ten to forty days they are in the nest being fed by their parents. The mouselike shrew can consume the equivalent of its own weight every three hours.
—Virginia Whitman
455 Hard-Working Birds
Our hours are nothing to the birds. Why, some birds work in the summer nineteen hours a day. Indefatigably they clear the crops of insects.
The thrush gets up at 2:30 every morning. He rolls up his sleeves and falls to work at once, and he never stops till 9:30 at night. A clear nineteen hours. During that time he feeds his voracious young two hundred and six times.
The blackbird starts work at the same time as the thrush, but he lays off earlier. His whistle blows at 7:30, and during his seventeen-hour day he sets about one hundred meals before his kiddies.
The titmouse is up and about at three in the morning, and his stopping time is nine at night. A fast worker, the titmouse is said to feed his young four hundred and seventeen meals—meals of caterpillar mainly—in the long, hard, hot day.
—Green’s Fruit-Grower
456 Birds’ Remarkable Night Vision
Birds have remarkable ability to see at night, especially the owls. The vision of owls is 100 times that of man; they can detect objects in a glimmer of light. One species of owl can capture prey at a distance of 2,500 feet when the light is no more than an ordinary candle.
457 Ability To Relax After Fight
Bats are said to live longer for their size than any other animal. They have a life span of twenty years. It has been suggested that the secret of their longevity is their ability to relax and go quickly into the deep sleep of hibernation. Right after fighting, one of them can almost immediately slow its heartbeat from 180 per minute to three, and it can retard its respiration from eight breaths a second to one every eight minutes.
458 Fastest Creature On Earth
The spine-tailed swift, fastest creature on earth, can fly in excess of 200 miles per hour.
459 Birds’ Strong Muscles
A bird’s wing muscles are over 100 times proportionately stronger than the arm muscles of the strongest man. A swallow, after one thousand miles of flight, will seek his nest at sundown—not because he is tired but because night has come.
460 Guided By Own Instinct
The longest flight made by a homing pigeon was the 7,200 miles that one flew in 1931 from Arras, France, to its home in Saigon, Vietnam. To demonstrate that homers are not guided by landmarks, the bird was taken to France in a covered cage aboard a ship that crossed the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The pigeon—straight as an arrow and over “unfamiliar” land—returned in just 24 days.
461 20,000-Mile Migration
The Arctic tern, a long-winged, swimming bird with a 15-inch body, performs an incredible feat each year. The amazing bird migrates from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back—a flight of about 20,000 miles!
Those on the West Coast simply fly down the coasts of North and South America. Those on the East Coast perform a herculean hop across the Atlantic and then proceed south along the west coast of Europe and Africa. Their flight south begins in September, then, in the Spring, the direction is reversed.
Apparently the arduous flight is good exercise. They live a long life. One banded Arctic tern lived a documented 27 years.
462 Other Migratory Birds
It has been estimated that ten billion birds yearly engage in migratory flights. For example, Alaskan curlews fly over thousands of miles of ocean to Hawaii. A tagged Baltimore oriole was reckoned to have taken a trip to South America and returned to the same elm in a New York town. The golden plover flies 2500 miles from Newfoundland to Colombia. One species of shrike wings its way 3500 miles from Central Asia to French Equatorial Africa.
See also: Animals.