44 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND Eccs. 



Family IBIDID/E. 



THE GLOSSY IBIS. 



Flegadis falcinellus, LINN. 



THIS handsome bird is now a much less frequent visitor to this country than 

 it was in former times. It arrives generally during the autumn migratory 

 season, more rarely in the spring. It has been recorded from various parts of 

 Scotland, as far north even as Shetland, and from Ireland, but more rarely than 

 from Bugland, where it is most frequently met with in the southern and eastern 

 counties, Norfolk perhaps being that from which the most numerous records come. 

 The Glossy Ibis is widely distributed in both Hemispheres ; in the western world 

 it is found in North America, in the eastern states, south to Florida, and in the 

 Antilles. It ranges over a great part of Asia and of Europe, whither it comes only 

 in the summer; it is abundant in Australia, as well as in most parts of the African 

 Continent, with which its name is so closely associated, through its congener the 

 venerated Ibis (Ibis athiopica) of the ancient Egyptians, though it is said, however, 

 by some, to be found no longer in Egypt proper. 



Like all other Ibises, the species under consideration breeds in morasses, and 

 generally in inaccessible localities, placing its nest a few feet above the water, 

 either in a low tree, or on bent-over flags or reeds. The nest is constructed of 

 sticks, and lined with reeds, and other aquatic plants. It nests in Europe in the 

 swamps of the Danube, and in the Deltas of the Rhone, and of the Guadalquivir. 

 The most celebrated of these breeding places has been described by Mr. Eagle 

 Clarke, in the " Ibis" for 1884, and by Mr. Seebohm in his "British Birds," that, 

 namely, in the valley of the Danube, near Belgrade. " This District," says Mr. 

 Seebohm, " extending for one hundred miles from the Weirse Morast to the 

 Obedska Bara, is the eldorado of Herons, Ibises, Spoonbills, Cormorants, Terns, 

 Gulls, Sandpipers, Ducks, Geese, and Pelicans. It looks like an endless plain, a 

 boundless forest of reeds, a paradise of fish and fish-eating birds, full of rivers 

 and lakes, ponds and canals, marshes and swamps, flooded meadows, half drowned 

 forests of pollard willows, and alders, every possible combination to make bird- 

 life easy, and birds-nesting difficult." In such spots the Ibises congregate in 

 hundreds, and build in close association, and often in the same trees, with Common, 

 Night, and Squacco Herons, and Pigmy Cormorants. 



