BLACK-NECKED STORK. 
on the under-wing ; the long innermost secondaries bronze-brown ; hinder-crown 
and nape bronze-purple ; fore-part of head, sides of face, and entire neck all round 
bottle-green ; tail green with faint coppery edges ; hides fine yellow, eyelash 
black ; bill black, inside of the mouth salmon-colour deeper towards the front, 
the skin between the fork of the lower mandible black, hregularly marked with 
red, giving it somewhat the appearance of cuts ; legs and feet coral-red. Total 
length 1,400 mm. ; culmen 320, wing 573, tail 200, tarsus 323. 
Young, one year old. Differs from the adult in having the enthe head and neck dusky 
brown as also a patch on the rump ; lesser upper mng-coverts, primary- and 
secondary-quills brown, instead of white as in the adult ; under wing-coverts 
gre 3 dsh-brown and white ; bill black ; hides brown ; legs and feet oHve-brown. 
Immature, second year. Differs from the young in having attained the bottle-green 
on the head and neck, and chiefly from the adult in retaining the dark-greenish 
feathers on the mantle and lesser upper wing-coverts, both of which are fringed 
with grey, these parts being pure white in the adult. The primary- and secondary- 
quills are brown, as in the young bird. 
Immature, third year. Has the head and neck as in the adult, but the lower hind- 
neck and mantle with splotches of brown, and retains the brown primaries 
hke the second-year bird ; the secondaries are white like the adult, with the 
exception of the tips which are greyish-brown. 
This bird is heavy in moult (Jmie). 
The fully adult-plumage is not attained until the fourth year. 
Nest. “ A pile of sticks about three feet in depth and four in diameter, a thin layer 
of grass or rushes is placed upon the sticks, and upon this surface which is 
almost perfectly flat the eggs (two in nmnber) are laid ” (White). 
Eggs. Clutch, two to four ; whitish ; axis 70-76 mm., diameter 51-56. 
Breeding-season. May-June (Le Souef, Northern Territory) ; August to April (Campbell) ; 
April (Macgillivray, Queensland) ; March (White, Queensland). 
Mr. J. P. Rogers found individuals of this species more or less solitary in 
the North-west of Australia, and when a young bird approached an adult 
that was fishing, the old bird rushed across to where it alighted and drove 
it away. They fish in the forenoon about 10 o’clock. They also eat carrion, 
as a young bird was shot feeding on the remains of a dead kangaroo : a 
small piece of the kangaroo’s intestines was found in the bird’s stomach. 
On June 5th, 1910, a pair came to fish in the Fitzroy River, in the shallow 
part where the water runs over a sand-bar. When large fish came they 
flapped about and struck hard at them, the noise of the snap of the bills if 
they missed could be heard 150 yards off, their bills being almost under 
water. Several fish escaped into the drift-wood : one bird probed the rubbish 
tiU a fish swam away. In one out of three times the fish was caught. 
There was nothing sedate about these birds. Seen from a distance they use 
their beak as a spear and at times the head was driven right under water. 
The late Captain Bowyer Bower, writing on June 23rd, 1886, from 
Derby, North-west Australia, says : “An adult female measured from tip 
to tip of the wing 6 feet 8 inches ; from the tip of the bill to the tip 
of the tail 4 feet 24 ; from the tip of the bill to the end of the toes 
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