NOTES ON THE WATERS OF WESTERN INDIA. 113 



are scarce in the Deccan in the rains, when the muddy and violent 

 currents are unfavourable to their fishing. I think it likely that most 

 of them migrate to breed; probably to the lowlands of the East Coast. 

 I did once know a man who declared that cormorant soup was very 

 good, but I can't say I have tried it. My friend's pot was supplied 

 with meat of Pelecanus carbo, but probably all species of the 

 genus would have much the same flavour, and that a strong one. 

 It would be a good thing if any use could be made of P. javanicus, 

 for the ravenous little bird probably diverts more fish from the human 

 dinner table than any other bird or beast except the paddy-bird; and 

 these two together, I think, eat more fish by tale, in this region, 

 than all other bipeds and quadrupeds put together. 



The next bird (and the last on my list) can do more as an 

 individual, but he is not nearly so common. This is the "snake-bird" 

 or "darter" {Plotus melanogaster), a "cormorant with a heron's 

 head and neck." 



This bird may be found on all the deeper streams, but in 

 this part of India not so often on tanks, probably only 

 because the Deccan tanks very often offer no good perching 

 places, or are too much disturbed by men and cattle, for else- 

 where the snake-bird is as apt to be found on a tank as 

 on a river. He delights particularly in wooded streams and in 

 trees that overhang deep water, but I have never seen him plunge 

 from such a position to catch fish like a king-fisher, as an American 

 species is said to do, whence the name "darter." Nor does he fishfrom 

 the wing, but entirely by diving like a cormorant. His flight, however, 

 is much more lofty, powerful and graceful than that of any cormorant ; 

 and he frequently soars for a considerable distance without apparent 

 motion of the wing, which the larger cormorants can do only to a 

 very limited extent, and the little cormorant not at all. I have never 

 got the nest of this bird, and I doubt his breeding in the Deccan or 

 Khandesh. If he does so> it is probably in the hills, but, as with cormo- 

 rauts, the diminished number of "snake-birds" in the rains makes 

 me think that they emigrate to breed perhaps to the " Bengal side 

 of the punkah," where Dr. Jerdon found them most plentiful. They 

 are much hunted for the beautiful black and white scapular plumes, 

 which have their edges as it were "Italian-ironed." There is no prettier 

 plume for a hat than the bunch from one wing of a snake-bird, with a few 

 white egret feathers set behind it and rising above it. The season for 

 shooting the birds is in the cold weather; some of them begin to moult 



