AFRIC'S CORAL STRAND 393 



no means striking. The date was February, and my reason 

 for mentioning the spot is a suspicion that at the proper season 

 these mangrove-swamps and dunes may prove to form a site 

 of highly interesting breeding-colonies. 



We had seen a few ospreys and noticed their "dining-tables " 

 at intervals along the shores ; presently we found a nest. It 

 was erected upon in fact, completely smothered an isolated 

 mangrove-bush in mid-water, and was built of gnarly mangrove- 

 stalks, a yard across, and lined with seaweeds, bladdered fuci, 

 and sponges which latter also grow in these seas. This was 

 quite an unusual site, for the ospreys, as a rule, nest on the 

 ground alongshore, wherever some dead root or other wreckage 

 has held up the drift sand to form a hummock. This, I read, 

 is also their habit in America. I shot one osprey and a spoon- 

 bill, which measured : 



Length. Expanse. Weight. 



Osprey . . 2i| ins. 62 ins. 3^ Ib. 



Spoonbill . . 40 55 3 



In Arabic the osprey is Abu gedaf(= " Father of claws " ). Our 

 Arab crew, however, were delightfully hazy on nomenclature. 

 They reasoned that, since osprey and heron both ate fish, and 

 both were birds, there could be no difference ! " Lo mismo da? 

 as a friendly Spanish mountaineer once expressed precisely 

 the same idea. For the flamingos, our Arab pearl-fishers 

 seemed to have no distinctive name, nor did they know 

 whether they nested here highly improbable, since neither 

 sand nor coral would serve as building material. 



Flying-fishes abound in these seas though the term is 

 rather a misnomer, since no fish really " flies." They merely 

 glide on outspread " planes " till the initial impetus is exhausted. 

 Still there were other fish here that seemed to renew that 

 impetus by a series of ricochets from the surface. Again, we 

 noticed others garfish of sorts (Hemiramphus ?} which shoot 

 from the sea at an acute angle, and after an aerial course akin 

 to that of an arrow, re-enter the water without leaving a ripple 

 at either end. A fourth type shoals of these in company 

 scurries along the still surface; but these certainly employ a 

 propellent power, since they leave behind them troubled 

 " wakes," as it were of a convoy of destroyers. Presumably all 



