NOTES ON PERAI 363 



away and sometimes the feet themselves. Certainly the mor- 

 tality must be great among young ducks, both wild and tame. 

 Many birds are caught that rest too long on the water, where 

 they pause to drink or snatch a pleasing morsel floating 

 there. Kingfishers, darting after a small fish, must often 

 go down never to come up, for it is the splash that attracts 

 the perai instead of driving them away. 



Some of the most common birds along the river front, 

 near Kalacoon, are the various kinds of kiskadees. Perched 

 on the topmost twig of the spider-legged mangroves, they 

 peer up and down the river this way and that, and dart after 

 swift fleeing insects that approach too near their point of 

 vantage. The prey secured, they return, or, changing their 

 minds, drop down to a spike of mucka-mucka and rest upon 

 the broad leaves, where a closer view of the water as it drifts 

 slowly by, may better be obtained. Occasionally their atten- 

 tion is attracted by a struggling insect that floats past, fight- 

 ing to free its wings from the impeding water, into which it 

 accidently has fallen, or, perhaps they see a tiny fish playing 

 near the surface. Then there is a flash of wings, a slight 

 splash, and the bird returns to its perch clicking its bill and 

 swallowing contentedly. 



The splash is often its undoing, for, at the sound, a dark 

 body moves swiftly through the water and the kiskadee is 

 dragged under with its prey still struggling in its bill. The 

 remnants of birds have many times been found in the stom- 

 achs of perai, and, a short time ago, I took from one nearly 

 the whole body of a freshly killed kiskadee. 



Nor are the warm-blooded animals and reptiles their 

 only prey. Not every day are they fortunate enough to seize 

 a bird or to find some helplessly maimed animal floundering 

 in the water. Their true food is living flesh and their crav- 

 ing must be satisfied. So naturally it follows that they war 

 on the myriads of fish that swarm the rivers, both in the shal- 

 lows of the mud-banks and sand-bars, and farther out in the 

 brown water of the deep cut channels. Fish are the daily 



