The Wonders of God’s Creation
In a recent article we considered the manakins (or jewel birds) of Central and South America. A bird which lives near them is known as the oil bird, and it, too, is unusually interesting.
These are bigger than the manakins, measuring about 18 inches from beak to tail-tip. They are brilliantly colored a reddish-brown; tail feathers are decorated with black bars, and heads and outside wing feathers are set off with white spots. Their powerful beaks are decorated with long whisker-like feathers at each side. Their wings, when outstretched, measure about three feet across, contrasted with very short legs.
The oil bird makes its permanent home, not on a tree limb or on the ground, but inside pitch-black caves where a person would need a light to find his way. Whole colonies share many of these caves, making nests and raising young ones in the darkness. How can they do it? Just in the same way that bats do. The Creator has given them ability to make sharp, quick sounds while flying in the cave. These echo back to their sensitive ears, telling them when something is in the way and a safe way around it.
In addition, they are night birds, hunting in the dark for the fruit of certain palms and other fragrant kinds of fruit which they gulp down whole while flying. Fruit of this kind is very nourishing and is all the food they need for themselves and their growing chicks. Good night vision and a keen sense of smell help them find these fruits.
It is the chicks that gave the guacharo the more common name of oil bird. Here is how it came about. When little ones first hatch out they are quite large and have enormous appetites, gulping down immediately all their parents bring them. But these fruits are full of fat and oily juice, so that in a very short time their enormous appetites cause them to become larger than their parents while still in the nest. But as their plumage fills out they gradually thin down. By the time they are three or four months old they leave the nests in a normal size, which is further helped by the exercise of searching for their own food.
Natives of the area, in times past, discovered that the fat of these young, oversized birds produced a rich oil and that when one was killed and the oil boiled out or squeezed from its body it made excellent butter, as well as fuel for their lamps. Killing them is no longer permitted, but that is how the oil bird got its unusual name.
Does the Lord God, their Creator, see these birds in the dark caves or when flying about at night? Yes, He both sees and cares for them, for His eye is always on every living thing, as the opening Bible verse tells us.
ML-10/29/1989