AFRIC’S CORAL STRAND 
393 
no means striking. The date was February, and my reason 
for mentioning the spot is a suspicion that at the proper season 
these mangrove-swamps and dunes may prove to form a site 
of highly interesting breeding-colonies. 
We had seen a few ospreys and noticed their “dining-tables ” 
at intervals along the shores; presently we found a nest. It 
was erected upon—in fact, completely smothered—an isolated 
mangrove-bush in mid-water, and was built of gnarly mangrove- 
stalks, a yard across, and lined with seaweeds, bladdered fuci, 
and sponges—which latter also grow in these seas. This was 
quite an unusual site, for the ospreys, as a rule, nest on the 
ground alongshore, wherever some dead root or other wreckage 
has held up the drift sand to form a hummock. This, I read, 
is also their habit in America. I shot one osprey and a spoon¬ 
bill, which measured :— 
Length. Expanse. Weight. 
Osprey . . 21J ins. 62 ins. 3^ lb. 
Spoonbill • 40 „ 55 » 3 » 
In Arabic the osprey is A bu gedaf (= “ Father of claws”). Our 
Arab crew, however, were delightfully hazy on nomenclature. 
They reasoned that, since osprey and heron both ate fish, and 
both were birds, there could be no difference ! “ Lo mismo da ,” 
as a friendly Spanish mountaineer once expressed precisely 
the same idea. For the flamingos, our Arab pearl-fishers 
seemed to have no distinctive name, nor did they know 
whether they nested here—highly improbable, since neither 
sand nor coral would serve as building material. 
Flying-fishes abound in these seas—though the term is 
rather a misnomer, since no fish really “ flies.” They merely 
glide on outspread “ planes ” till the initial impetus is exhausted. 
Still there were other fish here that seemed to renew that 
impetus by a series of ricochets from the surface. Again, we 
noticed others—garfish of sorts (Hemiramphus ?)—which shoot 
from the sea at an acute angle, and after an aerial course akin 
to that of an arrow, re-enter the water without leaving a ripple 
at either end. A fourth type—shoals of these in company— 
scurries along the still surface; but these certainly employ a 
propellent power, since they leave behind them troubled 
“ wakes,” as it were of a convoy of destroyers. Presumably all 
