They build their nests in the banks of rivers or rivulets, in holes which they excavate to the depth of six or seven feet.
The Motmots are Birds still very imperfectly known. They are remarkably massive in form, heavy and slow on the wing. In the Motmots the beak is long, robust and crenated at the edge. They are very wild, and lead an isolated life in the thick forests of South America, where they build in holes in trees. They are about the size of a Magpie and many of that Bird’s bad qualities are attributed to the Brazilian Motmot.
This group is characterized by a long, slender beak, straight or curved, but always without indentation, and comprises the Humming-birds, Creepers, Nuthatches and Hoopoes.
The Humming-birds are the most lovely of the winged race. Nature seems to have endowed them with her rarest gifts. In creating them she surpassed herself, and exhausted all the charms at her disposal; for she gave them grace, elegance, rapidity of motion, magnificence of plumage, and indomitable courage. What can be more delightful than the sight of these little feathered beauties, flashing with the united fires of the ruby, the topaz, the sapphire, and the emerald, flying from flower to flower amid the richest tropical vegetation? Such are the lightness and rapidity of some of the smaller species, that the eye can scarcely follow the quick beat of their wings. When they hover they appear perfectly motionless, and one might fancy them suspended by an invisible thread.
Specially adapted for life in the air, they are unceasingly in motion, searching for their food in the calyx of flowers, from which they drink the nectar with so much gentleness that the plant is scarcely stirred. But the juice and honey of flowers, as some authors affirm, are not their only food—such unsubstantial diet would be insufficient to sustain the great activity displayed almost every moment of their existence.
The tongue of the Humming-bird is a microscopic instrument of marvellous arrangement. It is composed of two half-tubes placed one against the other, capable of opening and shutting, like a pair of pliers. Moreover, it is constantly moistened by a glutinous saliva, by which it is enabled to seize and hold Insects.