THE GLOSSY-IBIS 321 



see a cloud of white resting on them. Streams of birds were now pass- 

 ing overhead, and soon we could see that the tamarisks were crowded 

 with a dense mass of white birds in constant turmoil and movement. 

 A regular babel of weird cries, quacks, and groans in different tones 

 came from the birds on their nests, though in flight they are all silent. 

 In a wet season these tamarisks stand in the water, but this year the 

 ground was practically dry round the chosen site for the colony, and as 

 few of the nests were more than ten feet from the ground, it seemed 

 absurdly easy to examine the nests. A few minutes served to show 

 how mistaken we were. In many places the bushes were matted 

 together with long trailing brambles, and grew close together. By 

 crawling on hands and knees one could get into the thick of the 

 colony, where the ground was strewn with broken eggs which had 

 fallen from the nests above, but on attempting to climb the bushes we 

 soon found that they were unable to bear our weight and gradually 

 collapsed, bringing down a shower of eggs with them. At last, after 

 many failures, we managed to find a place where the matted brambles 

 held the tamarisks up sufficiently to enable us to reach the top, but 

 not without serious damage to our clothes and skins as well. Here a 

 wonderful sight met our view. Above us in the clear sky floated silently 

 thousands of birds, a few purple-herons, a pair of spoonbills, thousands 

 of little-egrets and buffbacked-herons, many night-herons and a few 

 squacco-herons. But conspicuous among them was a small flock of 

 glossy-ibises, their blackish plumage contrasting strongly with the 

 snowy whiteness of the egrets and buffbacked-herons. Nests were 

 visible by hundreds on every side. Within arm's-reach were half a 

 dozen, while every bush was crowded to the utmost limit of its capacity 

 by others. The wide, flat nests of the purple-heron, with their large 

 blue-green eggs, were easily distinguished. Then the spoonbill's flimsy 

 nest with its white eggs, flecked with red-brown, was marked down. 

 The small eggs of the squacco, too, could be separated without difficulty 

 by their size, and those of the glossy-ibis by their deep blue, quite differ- 

 ent from the pale greenish blue tints of the other herons. The eggs of 



