St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-04-27
THE QUEZZAL.
A Bird That Is to Guatemala What
the Eagle Is to the United

A Bird That Is to Guatemala What
the Eagle Is to the United
States.
New York Sun.
"What do You call those birds?" asked
a visitor to the store of a well-known
downtown taxidermist, pointing to
couple of feathered creatures, bound
separately in paper, with the tails and
heads protruding and showing gorge
IIous plumage. They were dried and
ready for stuffing. The body of each,
INCLUDING the head, was, perhaps, five
inches long, but, throwing the tail into
+ sthe measurement, either bird would
have required four-foot tape to con-
meet the point of its beak with the tip
of its longest tail feather. One of the
birds had two long feathers in its tail,
and the other had two shorter ones; but
nature, as if to compensate for this dis
parity OF plumage, had given the bird
| that would otherwise have been clearly
at disadvantage third and middle
! feather that was very long indeed.
CHESTS adorned the heads, and white
cotton had been stuffed into the eye cav
!7ities.
f. j''This," said the dealer tenderly. TAX
ing one of them up in his hand, lis the
qpezzal, Or bird of liberty, of Guate-
imala. 1t is to be found only in small
| portion of the country, and is now very
rarely seen at all. A gentleman who
was recently in Central America man
aged to secure this pair, and left them
with me to be dressed and mounted, the
people down there being able only to
dry and preserve them. Quezzal is to
Guatemala what the eagle is to the
United States of America-its national
bird. Its picture, rather distorted. is
| stamped Oh many of Guatemala's coins
and engraved on all the postage stamps
| of that country. Whether it took its
name from the ancient capital, or the
| old metropolis was called after it, is
| question not fully settled; but QueZZal
is the title of both. The quezzal has, as
| you must perceive, great personal adj
vantage over the eagle, even in its wild
state, and we are all familiar with the
bedraggled appearance of the Gagged
eagle. Now, the QueZZal is never Gagged
longer than few hours. 1t is truly a
bird of liberty, and it dies almost i'm
| mediateiy when captured. Its pride in
it rear feathers is evidently dearer than
it's love for life. When one of them
accidently gets soiled or broken, the
bird goes to its nest, sits down, and
dies. Ii caught in trap 1T is always
found dead, and when the young birds
are taken from the nest they die at
! once. Occasionally quezZal has been
captured, and in a few seconds restored
to liberty, but the contamination of the
hand could not be removed with the
grasp, and it dropped lifeless to the
earth before it had flown many yards.
They are brought down for mercantile
purposes, when the opportunity pre-
sents itself. with very small shot fired
at long range. The quezzal builds a
round-roofed nest, like the home of the
wren, only instead of one hole there are
two, directly opposite each other. Thus
the bird avoids the tail-breaking neces-
sity of turning around to make its exit.
1t goes in at one side and out at the
other, and the long feathers, which
wave gently in the air at nesting-time,
are slowly and cautiously drawn after
it,"