THE SPOONBILL 315 



the cormorants. When nearly full grown, young spoonbills, on being 

 approached, will scramble out of the nest, plunge into the water, and 

 disappear among the reeds. 1 



In Roumania a breeding-place some miles from the main stream 

 of the Danube, visited by Messrs. E. Mackenzie Murray and F. R. 

 Ratcliff in 1911, was also placed in thick reed-beds growing in deep 

 water, and contained perhaps about a hundred nests. In South Spain 

 one meets with isolated nests on the tamarisk bushes, which in normal 

 seasons are surrounded by water, and are covered with thousands of 

 nests of little egret and buffbacked-heron. These nests are built of 

 twigs and branches of tamarisk, and look bulky by comparison with 

 those of the smaller herons, but are in reality as a rule very flimsy 

 structures. Most of the nests here are built among the reed-beds, but 

 in 1906, an exceptionally dry year, we met with about eighteen pairs on 

 a barren flat island, which only rose a few inches above the surface 

 of the laguna. Here were packed closely together thirteen nests, all 

 touching or almost touching one another, and forming practically one 

 continuous row of nests on a common foundation of dead reeds and 

 mud. In striking contrast to other colonies, these nests were quite 

 exposed and had not the slightest cover near them, and the white 

 plumage of the incubating birds was visible a mile away. 2 Evidently 

 the nesting-site of this colony varies from year to year, for in 1911 

 Mr. W. Farren found most of the spoonbills nesting on partly sub- 

 merged tamarisks in company with various species of herons. The 

 nests were built of sticks with some aquatic vegetation for lining, and 

 in some cases rested almost on the water, and at other times were 

 3 feet or more above it. Some of the egrets' nests were so close to 

 those of the spoonbills that they almost touched, and one spoonbill 

 was unmercifully bullied by an egret when returning to its nest, 

 but made no attempt to retaliate. Probably the largest European 

 colony is that in the great morass of the Obedska Bara, where Herr 



1 R. B. Lodge, Pictures of Bird Life, p. 234. 



2 Chapman also states that in 1909 they nested on or among the low samphire scrub at the 

 Caflo de la Junqueria, and in 1910 none bred. 



