TANTALUS.—PLATALEA. 189 
The Wood-Ibis inhabits the Gulf States of North America and Florida, as well as 
some of the Central United States. It is resident in Mexico, where Sumichrast gives 
its habitat as the hot and temperate parts of both coasts, and Grayson says that it is 
abundant at Mazatlan at all seasons. We found the ‘“ Alcatraz,” as it is called, not 
uncommon about the rivers in the forests of the Pacific coast of Guatemala, and 
Mr. Richmond states that it was plentiful in a marsh on the Rio Escondido”? in 
Nicaragua. It breeds in Cuba, and also in many parts of South America. 
In habits 7. loculator resembles many of the Herons and Storks, but it is more 
gregarious, assembling in large flocks during the spring and circling in the air after 
the manner of Turkey Vultures, and nesting in communities numbering (according to 
the late Dr. Bryant) at least a thousand. The food consists of crustaceans, fish, small 
rodents, insects, &c. 
The nests are large, composed of small twigs lined with moss; they are placed on 
trees, often at such a height as to be quite inaccessible. The eggs are white, generally 
three in number. 
Fam. PLATALEIDZ. 
The Spoonbills resemble the Herons in having a desmognathous palate, but differ 
from them, as also from the Steganopodes, in their schizorhinal nostrils. Mr. Ridgway, 
in his paper on American Herodiones, distinguishes the Spoonbills and Ibises from the 
Herons by the following characters:—Sides of the maxilla with a deep and narrow 
groove, extending uninterruptedly from the nasal fosse to the extreme tip of the bill ; 
angle of the mandible produced and decurved. 
The peculiar flat bill, narrow in the middle and then widening out into a broad 
spatula, is sufficient to distinguish the Plataleide from the Ibises. 
PLATALEA. 
Platalea, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 231 (1766). 
Ajaja (Reichenb.), Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xxvi. p. 52 (1898). 
The characters given above for the family are the same as those of the genus, of 
which six species are known. Spoonbills are found throughout the temperate and 
tropical portions of both hemispheres. Some naturalists recognize three genera, 
separating the Australian Spoonbill from the typical forms on account of the want of 
an occipital crest, and the development of ornamental plumes on the chest and inner 
secondaries. ‘The American bird differs from its Old-World allies in having the head 
bare, the auricular orifice being exposed, and the species has been separated, by some 
ornithologists, as a distinct genus, Ajaja. It also has a remarkable trachea, unlike 
that of any other known bird (¢f. Garrod, P. Z. S. 1875, p. 300). 
