Page - 1233 - in The Complete Aristotle

< div class=“quote”> The Hoopoe, witness to his own distress, Is clad by Zeus in variable dress:- Now a gay mountain-bird, with knightly crest, Now in the white hawk’s silver plumage drest, For, timely changing, on the hawk’s white wing He greets the apparition of the Spring. Thus twofold form and colour are conferred, In youth and age, upon the selfsame bird. The spangled raiment marks his youthful days, The argent his maturity displays; And when the fields are yellow with ripe corn Again his particoloured plumes are worn. But evermore, in sullen discontent, He seeks the lonely hills, in self-sought banishment. Of birds, some take a dust-bath by rolling in dust, some take a water-bath, and some take neither the one bath nor the other. Birds that do not fly but keep on the ground take the dust-bath, as for instance the hen, the partridge, the francolin, the crested lark, the pheasant; some of the straight-taloned birds, and such as live on the banks of a river, in marshes, or by the sea, take a water-bath; some birds take both the dust-bath and the waterbath, as for instance the pigeon and the sparrow; of the crooked-taloned birds the greater part take neither the one bath nor the other. So much for the ways of the above-mentioned, but some birds have a peculiar habit of making a noise at their hinder quarters, as, for instance, the turtle-dove; and they make a violent movement of their tails at the same time that they produce this peculiar sound. 1233