A Hoopoesque Feathursday
HOOPOES!!
Here is a wood engraving of the exquisitely-crested Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupa epops) from a drawing by the German nature artist Robert Kretschmer (1812-1872), as published in Animate Creation by the English natural history popularizer J. G. Wood (1827-1889), published in New York in three volumes by Selmar Hess in 1885.
We can never get enough of these excellent birds, found throughout Eurasia and the northern half of Africa. They're really good at eradicating pests; can't we import some to America? It's hard to tell what these birds might be related to, but they are a genus in the order Bucerotiformes, and so, perhaps surprisingly, are most closely related to hornbills. Of its magnificent fan-like crest, J. G. Wood relates this legend:
Solomon was once journeying across the desert and was fainting with heat, when a large flock of Hoopoes came to his assistance, and by flying between the sun and the monarch formed an impenetrable cloud with their wings and bodies. Grateful for their ready help, Solomon asked the birds what reward they would choose in return for their services. . . . the Hoopes answered that they would like each bird to be decorated with a golden crown; and, in spite of Solomon's advice, they persisted in their request, and received their crowns accordingly.
At first the birds rejoiced in their diadems of gold, but not long after they began to find themselves hunted for these valuable commodities. And so they sought out Solomon. . . .
full of repentance at their rejection of his advice, and begging him to rescind the gift which they so unwisely demanded. Solomon granted their request, and removed the golden crown from their heads; but, being unwilling that the birds should be left without a mark by which they might be distinguished from their fellows, he substituted a crown of feathers for that gold, and dismissed them rejoicing.
Our copy of Animate Creation is a revised edition, adapted to American zoology by the American physician and zoologist Joseph B. Holder, of an earlier British publication by Wood first published in London by George Routledge as The Illustrated Natural History in 1853.
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