TANTALUS LOCULATOE, WOOD IBIS. 515 



foot, let us do it in an nndertone. We peer now tlirongh a thick fringe 

 of arrow-wood, but only in time to see a flock of Ibises burryiiig over 

 the tops of the copse beyond, croaking dismally, it seems to us, though 

 doubtless in exultation. Never mind ! we are used to this sort of thing, 

 and know that neither pet nor wild birds always do just as we would 

 have them— but what is this ! " Croak, croak, croak ! " right overhead ; 

 a pair of birds, flapping along from the direction we have come, doubt- 

 less to join the feasting party they expected to find here. That was a 

 good shot! so was that! An Ibis each time, at forty or fifty yards. 

 There lie the birds, one quite dead, floating on the slimy pool, the 

 other winged, with a pellet in his brain, too, perhaps, he tumbles so 

 wildly over the mud, soiling his snowy plumage. How the birds for 

 half a mile around are croaking! there'll be no more shooting at this 

 particular spot ; we may as well go home to breakfast. It is eight 

 o'clock, and already the sun glares fiercely. 



We have skinned and put away the dead Ibises, after careful meas- 

 urements, and noting the colors of the parts that fade in drying. The 

 usual question arises, how to worry through with the day, as we loiter, 

 sweating, half undressed, under the verandah on the shady side of the 

 house. To go out after birds at noon-day is impossible ; will not some 

 birds kindly come to us 1 Fulfilment we have, even in the expression 

 of the wish; there are birds to lend wings to leaden hours even during 

 the sun's reign of terror at Fort Yuma. A long white line, dimly seen at 

 first in the distance, issues out of the gray-green woods. It is a troop 

 of Wood Ibises, leaving their heated covert for what seems the still 

 less endurable glare of day, yet reckoning well, for they have before en- 

 joyed the cooler currents of the upper air, unheated by reflection from 

 the parched and shrinking sands. They come nearer, rising higher as 

 they come, till they are directly over head, in the bright blue. Flap- 

 ping heavily until they had cleared all obstacles, then mounting faster 

 with strong, regular beats of their broad wings, now they sail in circles 

 with wide-spread, motionless pinions, supported as if by magic. A 

 score or more cross each other's jiaths in interminable spirals, their 

 snowy bodies tipped at the wing-points with jetty black, clear cut 

 against the sky ; they become specks in the air, and finally pass froni 

 view. 



I am not aware that the Ibises circle about as I have described at 

 particular hours of the day, but I generally saw them so occupied in the 

 forenoon. The habit is constant with them, and quite characteristic. 

 They are often joined by numbers of Turkey Buzzards — birds that have 

 the same custom. Those familiar with the aerial gyrations of these birds, 

 when, away from their loathsome feasts, they career high over head, 

 will have, by adding to the Buzzard's movements the beauty of plumage 

 that the Ibises possess, a good idea of the pleasing appearance of the 

 latter. Audubon says that their evolutions are performed when diges- 

 tion is going on, and continued until they again feel the cravings of 

 hunger. He has so well described their mode of feeding, that I cannot 

 do better than quote his paragraph. "The Wood Ibis," he says, " feeds 

 entirely upon fish and aquatic reptiles, of tvhich it destroys an enormous 

 quantity, in fact more than it eats ; for if they have been killing fish for 

 half an hour, and gorged themselves, they suffer the rest to lie on the 

 water untouched, to become food for alligators. Grows, and Vultures. 

 To procure its food, the Wood Ibis walks through shallow, muddy lakes, 

 or bayous, in numbers. As soon as they have discovered a place abound- 

 ing in fish, they dance, as it were, all through it, until the water becomes 

 thick with the mud stirred from the bottom with their feet. The fishes, 



