50 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 



or on the plashy border of the hummock, one hears the melan- 

 choly mourning of that gigantic rail, the limpkin or courlan, a 

 curious brown and white striped bird, not exactly rail and 

 hardly a crane, whose doleful wailing gives it the local name 

 of the "crying bird" or " mourning widow." 



Among such neighbors lives the anhinga, the cousin of the 

 gannet and the cormorant of the rocks. Seeing them side by 

 side you would not admit the relationship until you looked at 

 their feet. For while the gannet is shapely and graceful, a 

 heavy bird strongly built, this slender relative looks as if he 

 were patched up out of the pieces left over after all the other 

 totipalmate birds were made. They are alike, however, in 

 both having the webbing of their feet extend along the inner 

 side of the foot, from the hind toe to the inner front toe, 

 which gives them three webs instead of two, like ducks and 

 other swimming birds. 



The anhinga has a long neck, excessively slender, drawn 

 out into a sharp and slender bill; a light, long, thin body; 

 wings like great fans ; fully webbed feet apparently unfit for 

 tree-perching, and a great, stiff tail, like corrugated sheet-iron. 

 His color is inconspicuous black for the ground color, usu- 

 ally glossed with green reflections, with gray stripes down the 

 shoulders. The female has a brown neck and breast. 



Concealment is easy for the anhinga. The cypress swamp 

 is full of gloomy, half-lighted corners, and his black and 

 slender figure fits into shadowy recesses of the forest swamp. 

 Even the light stripes on his back, though they look conspicu- 

 ous, are a protection to him, resembling as they do the ridges 

 on the cypress bark with their light tops and darker grooves 

 between. 



But the snake-bird does not rely entirely upon his color for 

 protection. When alarmed he drops quietly from his perch, 



