CHAPTER XXXVI. 

 STEGANOPODES. 



Totipalmate Sea Birds — Altricial Birds. 



This is the order of the gannets, the pelicans, the 

 cormorants, the darters, and the frigate birds. Of the 

 order, only the cormorants and the pelicans occur with 

 enough frequency within the limits of the United States 

 to merit discussion here. In 1880, a frigate bird was 

 captured in central Kansas, but this was a straggler from 

 some band which may have come a little way inland from 

 Gulf waters, and by storms or some strange chance, have 

 been drawn out of its course. Perhaps this shows us 

 how the entrance of birds into new regions is begun. 

 The frigate birds are, so far as we know them to-day, 

 strictly maritime birds. This is in the same line with 

 the surprise which one of the groove-billed anis of the 

 Rio Grande country and Mexico gave Kansas in the 

 spring of 1902, when it appeared, half starved and cer- 

 tainly lost, in a hay field, where it fell exhausted. 



This is the only order of birds in which the feet are 

 totipalmate; that is, all four of the toes are joined by a 

 webbing. To make this possible, the hind toe is turned a 

 little to one side. (Fig. 115.) The legs are set even farther 

 back than the legs of the Lamellirostres, which fact makes 

 the birds even more ungainly on the land. All of the birds 

 have a gular pouch, and with the pelicans this is used 

 as a dip net to catch fishes. The brown pelicans swoop 

 down from on the wing to catch the fish; but the white 

 pelicans swim along with their curious fish basket held 



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