94 GLIMPSES OF INDIAN BIRDS 



come slowly forward until they touch the water. 

 The whole flock settles without making any splash. 

 It has never been my good fortune to watch the 

 flight of flamingos at very close quarters. I will, 

 therefore, reproduce from the Saturday Review 

 Colonel Willoughby Verner's description of those he 

 witnessed in Spain : " What a wonderful sight it was ! 

 The curious-shaped heads and bulbous beaks at the 

 end of the long, thin, outstretched, and snake-like 

 necks, the small compact bodies, shining white below 

 and rosy pink above, the crimson coverts and glossy 

 black of the quickly moving pinions, and the im- 

 mensely long legs projecting stiffly behind, ending 

 in the queer-shaped feet. Surely no other bird on 

 God's earth presents such an incongruous and almost 

 uncanny shape and yet affords such a beautiful 

 spectacle of colour and movement. Onward they 

 sped, now in one long sinuous line ; now with some 

 of the birds in the centre or rear increasing their 

 speed and surging up ' line abreast ' of those in front 

 of them, and again falling back and resuming their 

 posts, ever and anon uttering their weird, trumpeting, 

 goose-like call. They were flying not fifteen feet 

 above the water, and as they passed abreast of me, 

 the moving mass of white, pink, crimson, and black 

 was mirrored in the placid surface of the laguna below 

 them which shone like a sheet of opal in the setting 

 rays of the sun." 



The beak of the flamingo is a curious structure. 

 It is bent almost to a right angle in the middle, so 

 that when the basal portion is horizontal the tip of 



