THE INDIAN WOOD-IBIS. 
Tantalus leucocephalus. 
Plate XLYII. 
The Indian Wood-Ibis, we are informed by Dr. Jerdon, is extremely common throughout India and Ceylon, 
frequenting rivers, tanks, ponds, and marshes, generally in parties more or less numerous, although solitary 
individuals are sometimes met with. In these situations its food consists of fishes, frogs, and crabs, in quest 
of which it stalks about in the shallows with its bill in the water. 
Captain Burgess, who has communicated to the “Proceedings” of the Zoological Society some interesting- 
notes on the birds of India, met with a community of these birds in a village near the Godavery river, where 
there were great numbers of banyan trees, both outside and inside the walls. These trees contained some 
fifty nests, the owners of which did not seem the least disturbed by the people passing beneath them. The 
village people stated that the old birds went off to the river to fish every day at early dawn, returning 
about eight or nine o’clock, and that a second expedition was made during the afternoon. So large was the 
quantity of fish brought back on these occasions, that the villagers were in the habit of collecting what was 
dropped while the young were being fed for food for themselves. 
Although so abundant in its native country, the Indian Wood-Ibis is seldom brought to Europe—indeed I 
am not aware of any other individuals having reached England alive, except the pair from which Mr. 
Wolf’s sketch is taken. These were received by the Zoological Society in July, 1864, having been presented to 
the Menagerie by their Corresponding Members Mr. A. Grote and the Baboo Rajendra Mulliek, of Calcutta. 
