WOOD-STORKS— HAMMER-HEAD. 



281 



The Wood- 

 Storks.— Family 



Tantalidte. 



to be a kind of connecting link between the Storks and the Ibises, though in 

 structure they resemble the former. Three species are 

 known — the American Wood-Stork (Tantalus loculator), 

 the African Pseudotatdalus ibis, and the Indian species, 

 P. leucocephalus. Of the nesting of the latter bird Lieut. 

 Burgess has given the following account : — "In a village 

 about ten miles from the Godavery river, where there are a great number of 

 large banian trees both outside and inside the walls, I fou'nd a community of 

 these birds, which had built their nests on them, probably to the number 

 of fifty. The trees inside the walls were as thickly covered with nests as 

 those outside, and the birds, which appeared docile and tame, did not mind 

 the noise of the people passing beneath them. When I visited the village, 

 the young birds were all well fledged and most of them able to fly. The 

 villagers informed me that the old birds move ofl^ to the river in the very 

 early dawn, and having caught a suflicient supply for their young, return at 

 about eight or nine o'clock ; a second expedition is made in the afternoon. 

 Some idea of the quantity of fish caught by these birds may be gathered from 

 what the people told me, that numbers of fine fish were dropped by the old 

 birds when feeding their young and were eaten by them. A young bird of 

 this species, which I shot in Sind, disgorged a large quantity of small eels. 

 The nest is composed of small sticks, and is placed at the top of the trees, and 

 if there are many on the same tree, they are placed pretty close together." 



In many of its characters the African genus Sco2nis, which represents this 

 sub-order, is intermediate between the Storks and the Herons. In the 

 form of the furcula, without any median projection, it 

 resembles the former, and it also wants the pectinated 

 claw of the Herons, while the absence of powder-down 

 patches likewise allies it to the Storks. In some points 

 of its anatomy Scopus is Heron- like, but in external 

 appearance it is unlike any member of the above-mentioned sub-orders, 

 colour of the plumage ia a sombre brown, but the 

 bird has a fine crest and a curiously-compressed 

 bill, with a strong dertral hook at the end. 

 Both the inner and the outer toe are connected 

 together by a distinct basal web. 



But it is in its nesting habits that the Hammer- 

 head is so peculiar. The nest is the work of a pair 

 of birds, and is placed either on rocks or trees, 

 sometimes six or eight being found within a short 

 distance of each other. Sir John Kirk found one 

 on the Zambesi, 6 ft. in diameter, with small 

 openings on one side. The nest is a mass of 

 sticks, and the bird has been said to make 

 three distinct chambers ; but in South Africa the 

 nests are described as being for the most part a 

 solid mass of sticks, sometimes to the extent of a 

 cart load, the nest being often decorated with 

 bones, bits of crockery, or other rubbish, or any 

 bright thing which the bird can collect, after the 

 manner of a Bower Bird (Ptiloiiorhynchus). 



These extraordinary birds are represented, as in the preceding instance, 

 by a single genus Bakuniceps, which, like Scopus, is confined to the Ethiopian 



The Hammer- 

 headed Storks.— 

 Sub-order Hcopi. 



The 



Fig. 41.— The Hammer-head 

 (Scopus vjnbretta). 



