Any animal who lives in the treetops is in danger of falling. The two-toed anteater hooks its long prehensile tail around a branch; thus anchored, it can dine at ease. When the sun rises, the two-toed anteater faces the problem of finding a shelter where it will be well concealed during the day. Sometimes it hides in a hole in a tree. If no hole is available it will look for a branch protected by foliage. It sleeps hanging down from the branch, holding on by its feet and tail, merging with its surroundings. It then looks like a tawny-coloured fruit. Its appearance and immobility while asleep help protect it from predators.

Two Toad Anteater Pictures

King Vulture Pictures

One species of cariama is called the crested; the other is called Burmeister’s. The crested cariama lives on the grasslands of western Brazil and northern Argentina. It spends most of its time walking on the ground and runs rapidly, instead of flying to escape from its enemies. At night it roosts in low trees. It generally travels with one other cariama or with a small flock. It eats fruit, berries, insects, lizards and snakes. Sometimes farmers capture young cariamas and put them with their chickens in order to keep their farmyards free of snakes.

Cariamas begin mating in the spring and the males strut, giving strange dog-like yelping calls in an effort to impress the females. The crested cariarnas nest on the ground. The females lay two brown-spotted eggs. The parents take turns incubating the eggs which hatch in about three and a half weeks. The young are covered with down when they emerge from the egg.

Like the crested cariama, the Burmeister’s cariama has long legs and grayish- brown feathers but it is slightly smaller. It lives in brushland areas instead of open grasslands, and builds its nest in low trees. Cariamas are said to have the odd habit of giving loud calls if they sense danger from afar only to become perfectly silent when danger is near. At the last minute they put their heads down and swiftly run away. They can fly, but not as well as most birds.

Cariamas are classified as belonging to the order Gruiformes, which includes the cranes, rails, and bustards. Some ornithologists think that this very old order of birds, which now contains only twelve families, is on its way out. Many species in it have recently become extinct or are, like the whooping crane of North America, on the verge of extinction.

The cariamas resemble the bustards of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia more closely than they do any other bird in the order. The bustards, like the cariamas, live on grassy plains and in brushland, and have brownish-grey feathers. The great bustard of Europe is about three and a half feet tall; the cariama stands about two feet tall.

Cariamas Pictures

Modern breeds of cattle were developed from wild oxen. They were possibly first domesticated as beasts of burden, but the Egyptians were milking their cattle as long as five thousand years ago. Cattle were also sacrificed in early religious rites. The ancestor of many domestic breeds of cattle was the huge Bos p’rimigenius of Europe and North Africa.

They were large
—bulls stood seven feet tall at the shoulders
—and lived in wild herds. Primitive man drew pictures of them in caves in southern France and these pictures can still be seen today. The last herd of these wild cattle, found in Eastern Europe, apparently died out in the sixteenth century.

At Chilhingham Park in the Border country there is a herd of “wild cattle” which are supposed to be direct descendants of the Bos primigenius. Actually these cattle are probably domestic cattle that were permitted to return to the wild several centuries ago.

The humped cattle of India, also thought to be descended from the Bos primigenius, are important to the people of Asia. Certain bulls of this breed are regarded as sacred and are permitted to walk about the towns freely. Asians have also domesticated the yak and the water buffalo, two other members of the Bovidae family. In the wild the water buffalo is regarded as one of the most dangerous game animals.

Wild Oxen Pictures

Pelicans are large birds. The average white pelican of North America weighs from ten to seventeen pounds when it is full grown. It is from four to five feet long and has a wingspan of eight or nine feet. Brown pelicans are smaller, usually weighing about eight pounds, and having a wingspan of seven and a half feet.
These birds are found almost everywhere in warm and temperate regions. The brown and the white pelicans are the only species in the Americas. In Europe, Africa, southern Asia, and Australia there are six species. Pelicans have existed in the world for a very long time. Fossil remains date back to between thirty or forty million years ago.

All pelicans have a throat, or gular, pouch which can be extended when they are feeding. The gular pouch of the American white pelican can hold as much as three gallons. This pelican fishes from the surface of the water; the brown pelican dives into the water for its food.

The white pelicans sometimes have a community fishing arrangement. They gather in a semi-circle on the surface of shallow water and with noisy splashings drive the fish in towards shore. Then, almost in unison, they gather the fish into their voluminous pouches. Pelicans for the most part eat “trash fish,” that is, fish which are not valuable to the commercial fisherman.

In March and April the white pelicans of North America begin their long migration from the Gulf Coast to their inland breeding areas. Over mountains and deserts they fly, to islands in fresh water lakes in Utah, Wyoming, and western Canada. A few nest in coastal areas, but most of the seven major breeding areas of white pelicans in North America are in fresh water.

They nest in colonies of from a few birds to several hundred pairs, depending on the local food supply. They may lay their chalky white eggs on the ground or in mounds of earth from eight to twelve inches high.
Baby pelicans are naked when they come out of the eggs, but within a week they are covered with white down. Their first feathers are grey.

When the young are about four weeks old they leave their nest and gather into groups with other young pelicans. From the time of hatching until the young are ready to feed on their own, the parents have bad to supply each one with about one hundred and fifty pounds of fish. In order to do this the parent birds may have bad to fly as far as one hundred miles a day to get food.

In September and October the white pelicans fly south to winter along the Gulf Coast. The brown pelicans follow much the same breeding pattern, but they are coastal birds and are seldom seen inland.

Pelican Pictures

The white storks appear to like the company of men. Originally they nested in tall trees but have given this up in favour of nesting on rooftops of churches and houses. And, because they are supposed to bring good luck, people in Central Europe have welcomed them, going so far as to put up wheels and platforms so the storks can easily find a place to build their heavy, bulky nests.

Even in the United States, where the white storks exist only in zoos, the big birds are often pictured as a symbol of maternity, probably a carry-over from some obscure European tradition. Early in the spring the white storks which winter in Africa begin flocking in large groups. They circle high in the sky soaring on updrafts of warm air. Then, still in large groups, they take off for their ancestral nesting grounds in Europe, arriving in.April or May. Some flocks go through Spain; some go through the Near East and the Balkans, and a few go across the Mediterranean and through Italy.

The males usually arrive at the nesting sites first, followed soon after by the females. Storks are thought to mate for life, but, if a partner fails to show up within a reasonable time, the stork that arrived first will take a new mate. They often use the same nest for several years, adding new material to it each year. The male hunts for sticks; the female fits them into the nest. Adult white storks, like all other storks, are voiceless, so their courtship displays consist of circular flights and bill clacking. They also have a peculiar display in which they throw their heads backward onto their backs, which makes them look as if they had broken necks. This particular display continues throughout their nesting period.
Eventually the female lays three to five white eggs which both parents take turns incubating for a month. When the babies finally hatch they are fed with insects, frogs, mice, and other small animals which the parents have picked up in lakes, marshes and fields near the nesting site.

The young storks remain in the nest for about two months. Then they are able to fly and can join their mother and father in hunting for food. In the fall when the flocks begin to migrate south, the parents usually leave before the young. The young birds apparently know instinctively where and by what route to fly south for the winter. They return to a place near where they were hatched when they are ready to nest.

White storks are large handsome white birds with black wing tips. They may stand as high as four feet. They have red feet and long straight red bills. At one time they were found in Asia as far east as China and Japan, but their numbers are decreasing. Only in Central Europe are they still a relatively common bird.

White Storks Pictures

The most colourful flamingos are those of the New World, especially the American flamingo which lives in the Caribbean and parts of South America. The adult American flamingos have pinkish-red feathers instead of the pinkish-white feathers of the birds living in the Old World.

Flamingos have a five-foot wingspread and stand about five feet tall. They have very long legs and necks, and fly with them outstretched. They are usually seen feeding or flying in fairly large groups. On their colonial breeding grounds the flock may number as many as twenty thousand birds.

The beak of a flamingo is very different from that of any other bird. The top part of it is bent down and almost looks as if it had been broken. When the flamingo feeds, it lowers its head so its bill is upside down on the shallow bottom of the salty mud flat. Then it scoops up mud, algae, and small shrimp. The bird has special filters on its beak and bristles in its mouth so it can get rid of any shells or other inedible objects.
Flamingos live on salt flats in almost desert-like regions where few other creatures can live. Those that nest inland do so on shallow salt-water lakes like those in Kenya in Africa. One advantage of such areas is that there are almost no predators, and since these birds nest on the ground their eggs and young are therefore safe from other animals. However, nesting areas may be flooded or become too dry. Then a whole season may pass without any young flamingos being raised. Flamingos may also be frightened from their nesting areas by low- flying aircraft, and desert their nest for that season.

The American flamingos usually arrive at their nesting places in the Caribbean in February. They often come by night in small flocks until there are several thousand of them on one small island. They soon begin their displays. Long lines of females weave back and forth across the salt flats. The males stand about in small groups occasionally flicking their wings and pecking at one another. The air is filled with the sound of constant gabbling. Finally pairs are formed and cone-like nests of mud are built.

The female lays a single white egg in the nest. Both the parents take turns sitting on it for about a month. They usually exchange places in the morning and in the evening, giving each other a chance to feed.
When the young bird hatches, it is covered with white down which is later replaced by grey down. It stays in the nest for several days and then joins a flock of other young flamingos its own age. The young bird then may be fed by any adult bird, and not just by its own parents. When they first hatch the babies’ beaks are not curved, but by the time they are six weeks old they have the same type of curved beaks as their parents.

By the time they are two and a half ; months old the young flamingos have developed their first brownish-white feathers and are able to fly. Flocks begin leaving the nesting grounds for the wintering grounds on other Caribbean islands and in South America. Not until they are four years old do the young birds acquire adult plumage and return to their ancestral nesting grounds to breed.

There are three other species of flamingos found in South America—the Chilean, the Andean, and the James’s. They differ in color of feathers, bills and legs. The An- dean and James’s flamingos breed on salt water lakes high in the Andes. For a long time it was thought that the James’s flamingo was extinct, but in 1957 ornithologists discovered some of these birds in a mountain lake in Bolivia. Two other ornithological expeditions were made to lakes in this region, and nesting flocks of James’s flamingos were found. A few of these rare birds were captured and taken to the Bronx Zoo in New York City in 1960.

The flamingos found in Europe, Asia and Africa are white with light pink wings. Their nesting colonies are in Spain and France as well as in the Near East, India and Africa. The birds which nest in Europe spend the winters in Africa, Flamingos have been in existence in the world for a long time. Fossil remains date back about forty million years. Some five thousand years ago a Neolithic artist painted the picture of one on the wall of a cave in Spain. This painting can still be seen today.

Flamingos Pictures

At one time cheetahs lived in India and the rulers of Indian states often had a pair of these “hunting leopards” trained to bring down gazelles and other antelopes. The cheetahs were taken to the hunt on a cart. Their heads were hooded. When an antelope was sighted, the cheetahs’ heads were uncovered, and they were released. The cats would creep up on the game, and then with a sudden burst of speed, would overtake the frantic antelope and kill it.

Cheetahs are now rare in Asia. They are found mainly in Africa, where they are also becoming rare. As with other game animals, they have been over-hunted. These unusual cats weigh about one hundred pounds and, including their long tails, measure about seven feet in length.

They have long thin legs and the claws on their feet cannot be retracted into sheaths. In the wild they often hunt during the day unlike other members of the cat family which hunt mainly at night. In open country they sometimes watch for their prey from small hills. A pair usually hunt together. Cheetahs are tan or yellowish with black spots. Baby cheetahs are grey and do not have spots.

Cheetahs Pictures