54 



THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 



of grass, etc., are always floating about the muddy water when a herd has been feeding. Their 

 cry is ahnost indistinguishable from the gaggling of geese, and they fl\- in the same catenarian 

 formations." 



The Spoonbills and Ibises also belong to the Stork Tribe. The former are remarkable 

 chiefly for the strange spoon-shaped bill : one species, a few hundred years ago, nested in 

 England. This remarkable beak is associated with a peculiar method of feeding, well described 

 by the late Mr. WoUey. During the operation, he .says, "the beak was passed sideways 

 through the water, and kept open till something palatable came within its grasp ; but the 

 action by which the bird effected this was most singular; fur instead of turning only its 

 head and neck, it turned its whole body from left to right and from right to left, like 

 the balance-wheel of a watch ; its neck stretched out and its beak immersed perpendicularly 

 to about half its depth : this semicircular action was kept up with great vigour and at 

 a tolerabl\- quick march." 



W(.;o 4v W. P. UanJ , I .■ \ 



SPOONBILL 



Sa called on account of its spoon-ihapctl bill 



Fh,u b, li: f. Danlc, F.Z S. 



SACRED IBIS 



Sacred to the ancient Eg\ptians, it is kno'wn to the ^-ihyssinians to-day 

 as ^^ Father John 



A graphic description by Mr. Alfred Crowley of a visit to the breeding haunts of the 

 spoonbill, about fifteen miles from Am.sterdam, in 1884, is well worth reproducing here : " Taking 

 a small boat in tow, we were punted across the open water, over which were fixing numbers 

 of sand-martins, swifts, common and black terns, and black-headed gulls, the reeds being full 

 of coots, moorhens, sedge- and reed-warblers, etc., and in the distance we saw, rising above 

 the reeds occasionally, a small spoonbill or purple heron. On nearing a large mass of reeds, 

 one of the boatmen struck the side of the punt with the pole, when up rose some fifty 

 spoonbills and eight or ten purple herons ; and as we came closer to the reeds there were soon 

 hovering over our heads, within eas\- shot, some 203 of the former, and fifty or sixty of the 

 latter. Strange to sa)', not a note or sound escaped from the spoonbills, and onl\- a few 

 croaks from the herons. On reaching the reeds, we moored our punt, and two of the men, 

 wading in the mud, took us in the small boat about fifty yards through the reeds, where 

 we found ourselves surrounded by spoonbills' nests. The}' were placed on the mud among 

 the reeds, built about i foot or 18 inches high and 2 feet in diameter at the bottom, 

 tapering to i foot at the top, where there was a slight depression, in which lay four eggs, 

 or in most cases four young birds, many ready to leave the nest, and several ran off as we 



