Marian Irmler, age 10!1, of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, for her question:
What exactly are bellbirds?
Some live in the New World, some live on the far side of the globe. One looks like a clownish crow and one reminds you of a TV antenna. One is as pale as a ghost. Some belong to one bird family, some belong to another. They are called bellbirds because of their lovely voices. Some sound like the tinkling of small silver bells. Otheis join their relatives in choruses that sound like cathedral chimes. You can hear them a mile away.
When the bellbirds sing, people stop and listen. Usually they are out of sight in the treetops and their bell like notes echo far arid wide through the forests. One of them is the white bellbird, also known as the ghost bird or the white cotinga. The Indians of the Amazon River named him the cotinga and the same word is used to name a whole family of birds that live is Central and South America.
Most members of the cotinga family go in for gaudy colors, feathery crests and dangling bright wattles. Most of them are squawkers, screamers and croakers. Only a few have voices that qualify them to be called bell¬birds.
One of these is the black winged bellbird of Trinidad and the northern forests of South America. He is a brownish bird with black wins and a coffee colored cap. Wattles of fleshy bare skin dangle down from his chin and throat and he seems to be nearing a beard.
The three wattled bellbird of Central America has three long, ropey wattles that dangle from the top and each side of his beak. When he makes them stiff, they stick out like a TV antenna. When he joins his relatives in a chorus that sounds like chiming bells, he tends to get carried away and his wattles lash from side to side.
The cotinga bellbirds dine on fruit and perhaps a few insects. In Australia and on nearby islands live other bellbirds that belong to a family called the Honey eaters. Actually they live on nectar. They are rather small birds with long curved bills and tubular tongues for sipping the sweet syrup from the throats of the flowers. Their sweet voices sound like little silver bells.
The crested bellbird lives in the wide open spaces of Central Australia. He is a handsome, robin sized bird, related to the flycatchers. His colors are reddish brown and white and the crest on his head is a proud tuft of pointed blackish brown feathers. This bellbird keeps to himself and his ringing song sounds like big bells, booming from all directions.
Some of the most talented bellbirds live in New Zealand. Several are honey eaters. But the general favorite is the Icokako, alias the wattled crow. lie looks like a glossy black crow with clownish patches of blue or orange on his cheeks. This bellbird rarely flies. lie scratches on the ground for insects and fallen fruit and when he sins, his big bell notes ring far and wide through the forest.