206 BIRDS

strong-beaked woodpeckers and active kingfishers,
the bee-eaters, and hoopoes, the cuckoos and motmots
and hornbills and trogons and toucans and the hum-
ming-birds, the very smallest of birds, whose nests are
no larger than half a walnut shell, and whose flight is
as the flashing of a jewel.

 

THE SWORD-BILL HUMMING-BIRD

Next in the series come the parrots and cockatoos,
allof them fruit and seed eaters with the exception of
the New Zealand kea, which has become carnivorous
since Europeans brought sheep into the colony.
Most of the parrots are brightly coloured ; they are
a well-marked group, easily recognisable, of whose