I 



394 The Plover-like Birds 



medium size, exhibiting a length of between sixteen and twenty inches, with very 

 long, slender wings, a short and slightly forked tail, and very small feet in which 

 the webs are deeply indented between the middle and inner toes. The plumage 

 is pure white below and black with more or less white-tipping to certain of the 

 feathers above. In flying, the body is carried at an angle instead of horizontally, 

 as in most birds, in order that the wings may clear the water as they skim over its 

 surface. Most of the feeding is done in the morning and at dusk, or possibly 

 in the night, the birds mainly resting during the middle of the day. Darwin 

 observed the Black Skimmers in South America busily engaged in feeding in 

 a shallow lake which was teeming with small fish. He states that "they kept 

 their bills wide open, with the lower mandible half buried in the water. Thus 

 skimming the surface, they plowed it in their course; the water was quite 

 smooth, and it formed a most curious spectacle to behold a flock, each bird 

 leaving its narrow wake in the mirror-like surface. In their flight, they fre- 

 quently twist about with extreme rapidity, and so dexterously manage, that with 

 their projecting lower mandible they plow up small fish, which are secured 

 by the upper half of their scissor-like bill." 



The Skimmers are clearly of ancient origin, as two fairly well marked species 

 have been found in the middle Tertiary of Patagonia. The living species, five 

 in number, are placed in a single genus (Rynchops] and are quite widely dis- 

 persed in the temperate and tropical portions of North and South America^ 

 Africa, and the Indian peninsula. But one of these, the common Black Skim- 

 mer (R. nigra), reaches our Atlantic coasts, where it nests in greater or less abun- 

 dance from Florida to southern New Jersey, and later in the season often wanders 

 considerably to the northward. It makes no nest, but lays the three to five 

 handsome eggs in a slight depression in the bare sand. The Indian Skimmer 

 (R. albicollis), according to Mr. Blanford, "is usually seen on broad and smooth 

 rivers down to the tideway, not in torrents nor, so far as is known/*- on the sea. 

 They are usually found in the morning and evening flying, often in scattered 

 flocks, rather slowly close to the water, now and then dipping their bills in the 

 stream." They occasionally catch fish, but he doubts if it is their general custom, 

 and asserts that the use of the bill is still unknown, a statement in direct conflict 

 with that of his distinguished countryman. 



Skuas and Jaegers (Subfamily StercorariincB). The Skuas 1 and Jaegers are 

 often called the Hawks and Vultures of the sea, for there they exercise the same 

 domination over their feathered companions and altogether play much the 

 same role as do the birds of prey on the land. They are large, strong, swift- 

 flying, Gull-like birds, distinguished at once by the beak, this being straight 

 for two thirds of its length and for the remainder curved into a strong hook 

 much as in the Hawks, and in further imitation of them the bill is pro- 

 vided with a cere the lower edge of which overhangs the nostrils. "Their 

 predatory habits, extreme violence in attack, and readiness to take and destroy 

 their feathered fellow-creatures and toilers of the deep when occasion offers 



1 The word Skua is said to be a corruption of Skooi, the Shetland Island name by which these 

 birds are known. 



