314 THE SPOONBILL 



Mr. R. B. Lodge also notes that on the Naarder Meer, when several 

 nests had been robbed early in the season, the second layings were 

 unusually large, one such nest containing 6 and another 7 eggs ! The 

 young are hatched about the third week of May in Holland, and differ 

 widely in appearance from their parents, the bill being smaller, thicker, 

 and only slightly spatulate. In those I have seen the bill was a 

 yellowish flesh colour, 1 and the unwieldy, swollen-looking legs were a 

 bluish tint. The wings, which showed the black primaries in the quill, 

 were generally held drooping, and the bird often rested, like a young 

 stork, on the heel (tibio-tarsal) joint, the tarsus projecting upward and 

 the feet drooping. When first hatched they are quite incapable of 

 standing, and can only progress by crawling, not attempting to walk 

 till they have been hatched for ten days or so. During incubation, 

 and also after the young are hatched, both parents may frequently be 

 seen together at the nest. Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing 

 the sexes, it is impossible at present to be certain as to how the duties 

 of incubation and providing for the young are divided, but during the 

 day small parties of five or six birds leave the colony from time to time 

 and resort to the mud-flats and seashore to obtain food. The actions 

 when feeding will be described later, but on returning to the nest with 

 full crop the new arrival at first seems indifferent to the solicitations 

 of its mate, who paddles in front of him, first on one foot and then on 

 the other, moving her bill, up and down, occasionally prodding him in 

 the throat with her bill, and even flapping her wings with widely gaping 

 bill and uplifted crest. 2 At last, with a flapping and gaping like that 

 of his mate, he prepares to deliver what he has brought. " After one 

 or two sideway shakes of the head, he stooped down and with a few 

 vigorous gulps opened his bill." Meantime the food had been regurgi- 

 tated into the upper part of the throat and the trough at the base of 

 the lower mandible, so that the young could pick it out without thrust- 

 ing their heads into their parent's distended gullet, as in the case of 



1 See, however, the widely differing accounts of the colours of the soft parts in the young 

 bird quoted in the Neuer Naumann, vol. vii. p. 6. 



2 B. Beetham, The Home Life of the Spoonbill, etc., p. 12. 



