1102 TANTALUS LEUCOCEPHALUS. 



swallowed it head foremost before I could get into the aviary ! Mr. Cripps writes of a pair he kept that " when 

 being fed they would clatter the mandibles, shaking the head from side to side all the while, and uttering a 

 hoarse croaking noise." At nights they roosted on the roof of a storehouse, and in a storm steadied them- 

 selves with their wings half open and their heads pointing to windward. 



Nidification. — The only breeding-place of this Ibis which I visited in Ceylon was the colony at Uduwila 

 tank. There, among the numerous species nesting at the time of my visit, were about a dozen pairs of the 

 Pelican-Ibis. The nests were placed on the same thorny trees as those of the Pelicans and Shell -Ibises, and 

 were large structures of sticks, some of them about 2 feet in diameter ; the interior was almost flat and lined 

 with smaller twigs ; they were placed on horizontal boughs, or at the tops of others, in which case the small 

 branches were bent down to form a foundation for the nests. The young, which were all hatched, climbed 

 adroitly along the branches to escape being caught. There were three in almost every nest. 



In India this bird is partial to banyan- and tamarind-trees, and sometimes nests in large numbers in the 

 centre of a village, as many as twenty nests being placed on one tree. Burgess, who gives an account of a 

 building-place in the Deccan, describes the trees, both outside and inside the walls of the village, as thickly- 

 covered with nests ; the old birds moved off at early dawn to catch fish for their young, and returned about 

 9 or 10 o'clock ; and such quantities of fish were brought by the birds that the people of the village ate large 

 numbers which dropped from the nests. Mr. Hume observed that the young in the nests of a colony which 

 he visited squatted down to be fed by their parents, although they stood bolt upright until the old birds arrived 

 at the nests. The number of eggs laid varies from two to eight ; but the normal numbers are three or four. 

 They are devoid of gloss ; some are pyriform, others almost perfect ovals, of a dull white colour, occasionally 

 with a few dingy brown spots and streaks. They vary in length from 2 - 58 to 2 - 95 inches, and in breadth 

 from 1-73 to 198 [Hume). 



Genus ANASTOMUS. 



Bill moderately long and straight, of a solid but fibrous structure, deep, laterally compressed ; 

 the culmen curved, the base descending to the forehead ; gonys much curved ; nostrils oval, 

 wide, and horizontal, placed near the base. Wings and tail as in the last genus. Legs and toes 

 somewhat more slender than in Tantalus ; the webs smaller, and the membrane at the sides of 

 the toes less developed. 



Bill acquiring a worn space with age, the result of attrition. 



