136 BIRDS OF LA PLATA 



did not meet with it. On the pampas it is abundant^ 

 and I have been told that it breeds in the marshes 

 there, but I have never been able to find a nest. It 

 is usually seen in small flocks of from half a dozen 

 to twenty individuals, which all feed near together, 

 wading up to their knees and sweeping their long 

 fiat beaks from side to side as they advance. An 

 English acquaintance of mine kept one of these birds 

 as a pet on his estancia for seven years. It was very 

 docile, and would spend the day roaming about the 

 grounds, associating with the poultry, but invariably 

 presented itself in the dining-room at meal-time, 

 where it would take its station at one end of the 

 table and dexterously catch in its beak any morsel 

 thrown to it. 



Formerly, when I wrote the bird biographies for 

 Argentine Ornithology I believed that there were 

 two species of Spoonbill in Argentina, but I found 

 that I was alone among ornithologists in that belief. 

 I can, therefore, only repeat here a part of what I 

 wrote in that work, and leave the question for time 

 to decide. 



The general belief is that the pale-plumaged birds, 

 with feathered heads and black eyes (the Roseate 

 Spoonbill havix^ crimson eyes), and without the 

 bright wing-spots, the tuft on the breast, homy 

 excresences on the beak, and other marks, are only 

 immature birds. Now, for one bird with all these 

 characteristic marks of the true Platalea ajaja, which 

 has a yellow tail, we meet on the pampas with not 

 less than a hundred examples of the pale-plumaged 



