DANCING BIRDS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XXV, 16 December 1899, Page 1120

DANCING BIRDS.

In Southern Brazil there is a little bird that comes as near to holding a regular “hoedown” —a minstrel song and dance—as it is possible for birds to do. It is called the “dancing bird” by the natives. It is a tiny blue bird with a red crest. Mornings and evenings the little fellows gather in a group of a score or so on a smooth, sandy, or gravelly spot, or at least a spot that is free from grass or any obstruction. Then one of the males flies to a twig somewhere overhead and begins singing in the jolliest jig-jog voice imaginable, and immediately the birds begin to step in perfect time with the song, and twitter an accompaniment, and, more than that, move their wings in time with, the music as they step about.

Akin to this dance is one where there is but a single dancer on the floor at a time. The bird is known as the rupicola, or cock of the rack—also a Brazilian 'bird. Like the little blue bird, it selects a smooth, hard floor as its dancing place, and there must be plenty of bushes about, for it does not seem to like spectators. About this kind of platform the birds gather, some on the ground and some on the bush. Then all sing, except one, who gets into the centre of the floor and there leaps and gyrates in a most comical fashion until exhausted, then he staggers off; but another instantly takes his place and repeats his performance, and so they go on, if undisturbed, till everyone of them has had his fling.