650 SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS —HEBOBIONES — IBIBES 
chin, and not quite separated from the bare loral space, because the feathers on the side of the 
jaw stop a little short of the hard base of the mandible. Young, first plumage (with traces of 
down still) : Remarkably lustrous. Plumage entirely green ; legs black ; bill blackish, in-eg- 
ularly blotched or regularly banded with pinkish-white. This green unicolor plumage, consti- 
tuting Ibis thalassinus of some, is retained till full growth, gradually giving way through a 
Fig. 454. — European Spoonbill, Platalea leucorodia, i nat. size. (From Brehm.) 
brownish or grayish to the purple-chestnut and iridescent plumage. Chicks hatch clothed in 
blackish down, with whitish bill. Southwestern U. S., especially Texas ; N. to Kansas ; W. 
through New Mexico and Arizona to California (to Oregon?), and far S. in tropical America. 
Swarming by thousands at some points along the Rio Grande. Nest in vast heronries with 
various herons, in the beds of reeds and rushes, rising in air by ^Miundreds of acres " when a gun 
is fired. Nest strongly and compactly woven of dead reeds, affixed by twining to broken down 
