522 BRITISH BIRDS. 
insects and frogs, for which it may often be seen searching on the low- 
lying coasts and on the shores of lakes and rivers, walking about some- 
thing like a Curlew. : 
The most celebrated breeding-place of the Ibis in Europe is the district 
in the valley of the Danube near Belgrade, extending northwards into the 
valley of the Theiss, and southwards into that of the Save. This district, 
extending for a hundred miles from the Weisse Morast to the Obedska. 
Bara, is the Eldorado of Herons, Ibises, Spoonbills, Cormorants, Terns, 
Gulls, Sandpipers, Ducks, Geese, and Pelicans. It looks like an endless 
plain, a boundless forest of reeds, a paradise of fish and fish-eating birds, 
full of rivers and Jakes, ponds and canals, marshes and swamps, flooded 
meadows, half-drowned forests of pollard willows and alders, every possible 
combination to make bird-life easy and bird-nesting difficult. The Danube 
and its tributaries rise in summer like the Nile. Hundreds of square 
miles are under water; but in most places the reeds and rushes, the sedge 
and rank vegetation of all kinds are so thick that it is seldom possible to 
squeeze a boat through them. Many of the colonies are absolutely imac- 
cessible, and those that can be reached require the assistance of a guide 
who is acquainted with the intricate labyrinths of the channels which lead 
to them. When once they are reached the sight is one that remains 
photographed for ever on the eyes of the ornithologist. I have twice been 
in this district, but not in the breeding-season, and must refer my readers to 
the glowing description of the Weisse Morast to be found in ‘ Naumannia,’ 
i. pt. 2, p. 78, written more than thirty years ago by Baldamus, and the 
briefer account of the Obedska Bara, communicated to the ‘ Ibis’ for 1884, 
p. 125, by my friend Mr. W. Eagle Clarke. 
The Ibis builds in willows which are half under water, and makes its 
nest at various heights from the surface in the same trees as Common 
Herons, Night-Herons, Squacco Herons, Little Egrets, and Pigmy Cor- 
morants. Sometimes one tree will contain nests of all the-six species. 
~The Great Cormorant and the Spoonbill are not so sociable; they each 
occupy a part of the forest reserved for themselves, but in the immediate 
neighbourhood, sometimes surrounded by the nests of the other species— 
a colony within a colony. The nests are made of sticks and reeds; but 
whether they are built on the radius model of the Egret or on the are 
model of the Cormorant it is impossible to say. The eggs are said to be 
three, and occasionally four, in number. They are dark greenish blue in 
colour, rather rough in texture, and the shell is finely pitted with small 
pores. They vary in length from 2°2 to 2:0 inch, and in breadth from 
1:55 to 1°38 inch. The eggs of the Ibis cannot well be confused with 
those of any other European bird; they are readily distinguished from 
those of the Herons by their much darker colour and less chalky 
appearance. 
