FAMILY PLOTID.E 



Sexes alike. Head, neck, lower back, rump, 

 tail and under parts glossy black; upper back, 

 scapulars and wing coverts of a deep ash color 

 margined with black. Naked skin on throat 

 bordered narrowly with white feathers. Plum- 

 age browner in breeding season. 



Young. Above grayish brown, including the 

 top of the head and the back of the neck, sides 

 of head and neck and under parts, buffy white 

 stippled with grayish brown ; the abdomen darker. 



One of the most abundant sea birds of the 

 Canal Zone, occurring along the Atlantic shore, 

 on Gatun Lake and along the Canal, but espe- 

 cially on the Pacific side, where they can be seen 

 in the afternoons streaming by, sometimes for 

 hours, in vast flocks, flying in their characteristic 

 regular formations from their fishing grounds, 

 where they congregate in great numbers on the 

 surface of the sea, to the islands where they breed 

 or roost. Some of the rocks of Panama Bay are 

 snowy white from their droppings. On the 

 islands on which they roost along the shores, the 

 trees are scabrous and bare and the ground below 

 white. Like grebes, they have the power of 

 swimming with only the head and neck or the 

 head alone, above water. They are repulsive in 

 appearance but birds of beautiful flight. 



25. Family PLOTID^E 

 The Anhingas or Snake Birds 



A family consisting of a single genus closely 

 related to the cormorants but differing in the 



