More or less allied to them are the doves and pigeons, which form the order _Columbæ_, in which the curious ground-pigeon _Didunculus_ is included--a form which presents an interesting resemblance to the celebrated and extinct dodo of Mauritius, long known only by certain pictures, and a foot and head preserved, one in the British Museum, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford.
Our sparrows, robins, and all our song birds are members of an exceedingly numerous "order" "_Paseres_." In it are included the crows (with those gaily-decorated crows, the Birds of Paradise, found only in New Guinea and the Moluccas), the bower birds and the lyre bird of Australia; the flycatchers, the pittas (or ground thrushes), the water-ouzel, the weaver birds, the wrens, the tits, the creepers, the honey-eaters, those African gems, the sun birds, and also the swallows.
To another order--the order _Macrochires_--belong those most beautiful of all birds, the humming birds, found only in America, and long thought to be allied with the really very different sun birds just mentioned. With these may be associated the swifts (which have such marvellous powers of flight) and the wide-gaped goat-suckers or nightjars.
Woodpeckers are considered to form an order (_Pici_) by themselves, while the cuckoos are thought to be near relations of the beautiful and eccentric toncans, the plaintain-eaters, the touracous, the kingfishers, the hoopoes, the bee-eaters, the hornbills, and the trogons, all, from the cuckoos to the trogons, being included in the order _Coccyges_.
The parrots form an isolated group of birds--the order _Psittaci_. Their most peculiar forms are the macaws on the one hand, and the brush-tailed loris on the other. The order _Accipitres_ includes all the birds of prey--that is to say, the eagles, falcons, hawks, buzzards, vultures, and owls. In this order is included the long-legged secretary bird, which looks like a cross between a hawk and heron.
Pelicans, gannets, cormorants (or shags), and darters go together to constitute the order called _Steganopodes_. The flamingoes are isolated, and by themselves form the order _Odontoglossæ_. The same is the case with the penguins, which have the order _Impennes_ assigned exclusively to them.