1146 HEKODIAS GAEZETTA. 



north it is recorded from Angola and Benguela, from the Gold Coast and Senegambia, and has likewise 

 been shot in the Canaries. To the Azores it is also a visitor, as Mr. Du Cane Godman saw specimens when 

 there which had been shot on the island of Terceira. 



Habits. — I have generally observed this very graceful Egret in pairs or alone, and have noticed it when 

 not breeding more about brackish lagoons and backwaters than the last species. It is often found watching 

 for fish along the courses of streams or gutters intersecting the ooze on the shores of the salt lagoons in the 

 north of Ceylon, and will frequently allow itself to be approached within gunshot. Its flight is, like that of 

 most Egrets, very leisurely performed ; and when on the wing, with its head drawn back and its legs stretched 

 out, it loses the elegant appearance which it has when standing by the side of water. It wades knee deep 

 about the tidal flats of salt lakes, and catches quantities of fish in this manner. Layard observes that he 

 found multitudes of small aquatic shells in the stomachs of those he shot at Cape Town ; but its principal food 

 consists of fish, twenty-five of which, Von Heuglin relates, he took from the stomach of one example. 



Nidification. — The breeding-time of this species in Ceylon is the same as that of other Egrets, from 

 December until March. In the latter month I found it nesting near Tissa Maha Rama, and in December and 

 January near Trincomalie. I have also received eggs from Mr. Parker taken at Nikaweratiya in December. 

 It builds in company with H. alba, from six to a dozen nests being sometimes constructed on one large thorny 

 tree standing in the middle of a flooded tank. They are platforms of sticks, either placed at the horizontal 

 bifurcation of two limbs, or near the top of the tree on smaller branches. The eggs are three or four in number, 

 moderately smooth in texture, and of the same colour as those of the last species, viz. pale sea-green; some 

 are rather pointed at both ends. They are smaller than the eggs of H. intermedia. Two examples taken near 

 Trincomalie measure 1'82 by 1'26 and T74 by 127 inch. The young perch readily on the branches near the 

 nests before they can fly, but often fall into the water, and are invariably snapped up by the crocodiles which 

 infest the tanks of Ceylon. Indeed I have had an old bird (winged by my shot) taken away from me (as I 

 was wading through the water to take it from the fork of a tree in which it had perched) by one of these brutes, 

 which, seeing the bird was wounded, jumped out of the water about two feet, seized it by the leg, and dragged 

 it under ! In India the nesting-time in the north is from July to August, and in the south December and 

 January. Mr. Hume states that very pale bluish-white varieties are common among the eggs of this species. 

 In India they vary from 1*6 to l - 83 inch in length, and from 125 to 1"38 in breadth. 



Subgenus BUBULCUS*. 

 Bill short, rather stout, and sensibly curved near the tip ; naral groove deep. 



* Scarcely separable from Herodias in point of structure, but differs markedly enough in habits to form a subgenus. 





