A Calcutta Bird Colon 



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business, for the head would be lowered and the 

 bill opened well before the surface was reached, 

 and sometimes the bird would miscalculate his 

 distance, and so stop his course that he had to 

 settle for his drink and have the trouble of rising 

 again. At one time, for some reason I could 

 never discover, all the cormorants took to settling 

 for this final potation, but they afterwards resumed 

 their old custom of drinking while flying. I used 

 to wonder why the darters, with their long necks 

 and much more buoyant flight, did not adopt the 

 same custom ; but I never saw them do so. I 

 did, however, not unfrequently see them walking 

 on the ground to collect sticks, though they often 

 pulled twigs off the trees, and I observed that 

 their gait was much more horizontal than that of 

 cormorants, the tail being kept well up from the 

 ground. When flying the darters also only 

 extended the fore part of the neck, the hinder 

 portion being doubled back ; and when in the 

 water the name snake-bird was seen to be most 

 appropriate, as only the long, snaky neck ap- 

 pears above the surface. One never gets tired 

 of watching birds like these ; and though darters 

 are perhaps hardly a possibility here, there is 

 no reason why we should not have a colony of 

 the common heron and cormorant in our London 

 parks, which would be quite as interesting as the 

 Calcutta one, and more imposing, from the greater 

 size of the birds. 



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