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32 Old World Birds When you talk to the bee-eaters they pretend you are not there. You can follow them into Madagascar & across the Mozambique Channel & still not register an acknowledgment. This is sad because you mean no harm & you have taken great pains to mimic their trills, chuckles, & whistles. Just to hear Darwin speak of them, you know that the scythe of their bills is made for the erratic snatch of wings midflight, &, as the wings are indigestible, they eject them. This is not to say that bee-eaters sugar their songs with upbeats before disgorging—far from it. Sometimes they beat the bee against a branch, then croak. You are surprised that a diet of stingers yields a rainbow plumage, but, given one more reason to quail, you hardly blush. The mistake is to imagine on moonlit nights you are one of them. ...

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