146 PELECANID^E. 



forms of sticks, lined with grass. Mr. H. Seebohm has 

 given an account (Zool. 1880, p. 460) of a colony near the 

 Horster Meere, in Holland, in which some 200 nests were 

 on the open ground. 



The young when first excluded are blind, and covered 

 with a bluish-black skin ; in the course of a few days they 

 acquire a thick covering of black down, and in three weeks 

 or a month they are sufficiently fledged to be carried on the 

 backs of their parents to the water, though still unable to fly. 

 The old birds fly well, generally low over the surface of the 

 water ; they swim rapidly, and dive in perfection ; their food 

 is fish, which they appear to catch with great ease and hold 

 with certainty, by the sharp, hooked, horny point of the 

 upper mandible ; their dilatable throat enabling them to 

 swallow a large prey.* When fishing they are frequently 

 observed to carry their heads under water, perhaps that 

 vision may not be interfered with by the ripple on the sur- 

 face. They are frequently seen sitting on posts, rails, or 

 leafless trees by the water side, when, if a fish should move 

 on the surface within their sight, it is pounced upon, and 

 caught to a certainty. An eel is a favourite morsel with 

 him, and a Cormorant has been seen to pick up an eel from 

 the mud, return to the rail he was previously sitting upon, 

 strike the eel three or four hard blows against the rail, toss 

 it up into the air, and catching it by the head in its fall, 

 swallow it in an instant. Cormorants on the wing frequently 

 follow the course of a river many miles inland ; and some 

 years ago one of these birds was shot on King's College 

 Chapel, Cambridge. 



That Cormorants possess considerable intelligence is 

 shown by several circumstances. They are easily reconciled 

 to confinement ; and Montagu, in his Supplement, relates 

 an interesting account of one that very soon became so tame 

 and attached, that it seemed to be never so happy as when 

 permitted to remain by the side of its owner. Saxby, in his 

 ' Birds of Shetland ' (p. 317), describes one which used to go 



* Mr. Gatcombe has known a Wrasse 14 inches in length and over 4 inches 

 in depth, taken from the gullet of a Cormorant shot in Plymouth Sound. 



