قراءة كتاب Birds in Flight

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Birds in Flight

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Pycraft W P

دار النشر: Project Gutenberg

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BIRDS IN FLIGHT

Kingfisher and Young

BIRDS IN FLIGHT

W. P. PYCRAFT

Zoological Department, British Museum (Natural History).
Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.
Hon. Member of the American Ornithologists' Union.
Associate of the Linnean Society.
Member of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.
Member of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Author of “A History of Birds,” “The Infancy of Animals,” “The Courtship of Animals,” “The Sea-shore,” Etc., Etc., Etc.

Illustrated by
ROLAND GREEN, F.Z.S.

LONDON
GAY & HANCOCK LIMITED
34 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2.
1922

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	Concerning Wings	1
	What a wing is—The quill feathers and their function—The skeleton of the wing—The muscles of the wing—The great air-chambers of the body—The Bat’s wing—The wing of flying Dragons—The wings of Dragon-flies and beetles.
II.	The First Bird	15
	The ancestors of birds—The first known bird and its many remarkable features—The gradual evolution of the birds of to-day.
III.	The Sizes and Shapes of Wings and their relation to Flight	21
	The evasiveness of flight—The size of the wing in relation to that of the body—Noisy flight—“Muffled” flight—The swoop of the sparrow-hawk—The “flighting” of ducks—The autumn gatherings of starlings and swallows—“Soaring” flights of storks and vultures—The wonderful “sailing” feats of the albatross—The “soaring” of the skylark—The “plunging” flight of the gannet, tern, and kingfisher.
IV.	Modes of Flight	35
	The movements of the wing in flight—Marey’s experiments—Stopping and turning movements—Alighting—“Taking off”—Hovering—The use of the tail in flight—The carriage of the neck in flight—And of the legs—The flight of petrels—The speed of flight—The height at which birds fly—Flight with burdens—Experiments on the sizes of the wing in relation to flight—Flight in “troops.”
V.	Courtship Flights	53
	The wing-play of black-game and grouse—The “musical ride” of the snipe—The “roding” of the woodcock—The musical flights of redshank and curlew—The “tumbling” of the lapwing—The raven’s somersaults—The courting flight of the wood pigeon—The mannikin’s “castanets”—Wings as lures—The strange pose of the sun-bittern—The “wooing” of the chaffinch and the grasshopper-warbler—Darwin and wing-displays—The wonderful wings of the argus-pheasant.
VI.	How to tell Birds on the Wing	71
	The small perching-birds and the difficulty of distinguishing them—The wagtails—The finches—The buntings—The redstart-wheatear, Stonechat—The thrushes—The warblers—The tit-mice—The nuthatch, and tree-creeper—The spotted flycatcher—The red-backed shrike—Swallows, martins, and swifts—The night-jar—Owls—Woodpeckers.
VII.	How to tell Birds on the Wing (continued)	97
	Falcons—Golden eagle—Harriers and sparrow-hawk—The heron—The cormorant, shag, and gannet—The petrels—Guillemots, razor-bills, and puffins—The ducks—The great crested grebe and dabchick—The pigeons—The “plover tribe”—The gulls and terns—The game birds.
VIII.	The Wings of Nestling Birds	117
	The wing of the unhatched bird—Of the coots and water-hen—The hoatzin’s wings—The wing of Archæopteryx—Moulting—The nestling game-birds and ducks—Teaching the young to fly.
IX.	Flightless Birds	127
	The steamer duck—The owl parrot—The flightless grebe of Titicaca—The dodo and solitaire—The ostrich tribe—The penguin’s wings.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Coloured Plates

Kingfisher and Young	Frontispiece
Jays	Facing Page	6
Pheasants	” ”	22
Brown Owl	” ”	30

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