736 BIRDS OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
feathers of the wing washed with rose-colour or purple; wing and 
tail black; bill yellow, and curved downwards at the tip; thighs 
and legs red. Length, 3’; wing, 18’; tail, 74”. The young bird is 
of a dull brownish-grey ; wing and tail black. 
Fig. Daubent. Pl. Enl. 389. 
Fam. PLATALEIDZ. 
713. Isrts mrurorica, Lath. Sacred Ibis. 
A few specimens of the Sacred Ibis or Schoorstein veger (lit. 
chimney-sweeper), as it is called by the colonists, have come under 
our notice, killed in the colony; one, a female, in fine plumage, 
having been shot at Green Point, within three miles of Cape Town, 
feeding about the rocks which line the coast in that direction. It 
appeared in Mr. Chapman’s collections ; and he informs us that they 
are very common towards the Lake. We saw a large flock of them 
at Zoetendals Vley, in December, 1865; they walked rapidly about 
a mud bank in the river near the mouth, probing for worms; and 
we noticed that they turned about in the usual quick manner of the 
Curlew. We were informed that they sometimes bred in that 
neighbourhood. It breeds occasionally near the Berg River, but 
omitted to do so the year we visited that locality. Captain Roe 
brought us a number of eggs from Dyer’s Island on the south 
‘coast. They are white, unevenly spotted, chiefly at the obtuse end, 
with small dry blood-coloured spots. Axis, 2” 9’’’; diam., 1’ 9’. 
Mr. Ayres met with it in Natal, and gives the following note: 
“These birds frequent the Bay of Natal and the mouths of the 
rivers along the coast. They are very shy. They feed with the 
Curlews at low water on the mud-banks ; but where they roost I do 
not know, though I have seen them sometimes sunning themselves 
on the upper boughs of the mangroves, together with Spoonbills, 
White Herons, &c. In their flight they usually form some figure 
similarly to the Pelicans, Swans, Geese, &c.” In a later paper he 
writes: ‘These Ibises are only here during the winter months, and 
then they are moulting, so that it is very difficult to get a specimen 
in anything like decent plumage ; besides that, they are extremely 
shy and wary, tough to kill, and frequent such localities as almost 
invariably to fall in the mud, which ruins the delicate whiteness of 
