126 BIRDS OF LA PLATA 
did not meet with it. On tM® pampas it is abundant, 
and I have been told that it breeds in the marshes 
there, but I have never been able to find a nest. It 
is usually seen in small flocks of from half a dozen 
to twenty individuals, which all feed near together, 
wading up to their knees and sweeping their long 
flat beaks from side to side as they advance. An 
English acquaintance of mine kept one of these birds 
as a pet on his estancia for seven years. It was very 
docile, and would spend the day roaming about the 
grounds, associating with the poultry, but invariably 
presented itself in the dining-room at meal-time, 
where it would take its station at one end of the 
table and dexterously catch in its beak any morsel 
thrown to it. 
Formerly, when I wrote the bird biographies for 
Argentine Ornithology I believed that there were 
two species of Spoonbill in Argentina, but I found 
that I was alone among ornithologists in that belief. 
I can, therefore, only repeat here a part of what I 
wrote in that work, and leave the question for time 
to decide. 
The general belief is that the pale-plumaged birds, 
with feathered heads and black eyes (the Roseate 
Spoonbill having crimson eyes), and without the 
bright wing-spots, the tuft on the breast, horny 
excresences on the beak, and other marks, are only 
immature birds. Now, for one bird with all these 
characteristic marks of the true Platalea ajaja, which 
has a yellow tail, we meet on the pampas with not 
less than a hundred examples of the pale-plumaged 
