The Zoologist— June, 1866. 251 



one who tnows the bird may see by the repeated diving in one place. 

 A bird also shot after diving in one spot for perhaps half an hour may 

 only contain one or two small fish, showing that a plurality of fish was 

 not the cause of its obstinately keeping in the one spot. I never but 

 once saw a shag gorged wilh fish. The serrated or comb-like claw is 

 used, as I have often seen in my aviary, to remove ticks from the head 

 and neck, the only parts infested with them ; these ticks are sometimes 

 as large as a fourpenny bit. This comb is admirably adapted to the 

 purpose: that it holds fish with it is a capital idea! What a clever 

 fellow first found it out ! a little flat toothed comb, not a quarter of an 

 inch long, be enabled to hold a fish ! 



Food, and how Swallowed. — Living fish are the natural food of this 

 bird, though stale fish (so that they have not lain in salt water), beef, 

 fat and candles will be eaten in confinement ; they will waste and 

 not thrive on any but a fish diet: tallow passes pure and uninjured 

 through them. Should the fish not be taken rightly in the mouth, it 

 is not thrown up in the air and caught, as some have said, but is 

 brought head to gullet by repeated small choppings of the bill ; the 

 instant the head is before the orifice of the throat the fish glides down 

 like " clock-work." I had a poor blind shag all last winter till the end 

 of last March, and though he was stone-blind he would never swallow 

 even a strip of a flounder against the scales, but always turn it by 

 repeated swaps till he got it the right way. They never tear a fish, or, 

 as I have said before, hold it in the claws. Should the fish not slip 

 down the gullet easily, it will be ejected to the bill again for another 

 bolt, or shook about in the throat. When a fish is swallowed the head 

 and throat are shaken, the latter making a purring sound ; the fish are 

 also stowed away by being pressed down with the head, the bird 

 making many curious contortions of the neck. Any fish too big to 

 swallow is rejected when the bird finds that such is the case ; fish 

 never are broken, but bolted entire. A fish from two to three inches 

 in width can be swallowed by them, and an eel of two feet long is 

 worked down by degrees entire ; six lull-sized herrings are managed at 

 a time, the throat being capable of great distension. In their native 

 element they are rarely found gorged, and never so much so as to be 

 taken by the hand, as is written : at least for seveu years among them 

 in Dublin Bay I never saw a cormorant or shag to be caught with 

 " chaflT." I never saw them drink, though when annoyed they will dip 

 the bill like the swan and goose. The throat and intestines are 

 infested with Ascarides. 



