3 86 
THE LIVING WORLD. 
most notable feature about this bird is its very curious and very huge bill, the 
upper mandible being enormously expanded and hanging over the lower. The 
point of the upper mandible is a long, hook-like termination, which the bird 
uses to tear and rip up its prey. 
Its food is fish, water-snakes and car¬ 
rion. It nests upon the ground, lay¬ 
ing two eggs in a shallow basin of 
mud, which is not lined. The height 
is about three feet, and the color 
is a dark slaty gray, with a narrow 
band of white on the edge of each 
feather. 
The Boat-bill Stork (Cancroma 
cochlearia) is another bird distin¬ 
guished for its singularly large bill, 
fashioned somewhat in the shape of 
a canoe, or as the two bills are 
an almost identical shape, they 
of 
re- 
It 
all 
semble two canoes laid together, 
is a South American bird with 
the habits peculiar to the heron 
family, except that it not only wades 
in the water and watches for its prey, 
but sometimes sits upon a perch 
and angles after the manner of the 
kingfisher. The male presents an 
imposing ap- 
STORK’S NEST ON EGYPTIAN MONUMENT. 
pearance, for 
though his 
plumage is by no means bright, he bears a long flowing 
plume of jet black feathers and a. beard of grayish-white. 
The neck is rather short, and the body about the size of 
a mallard duck. 
The Spoon-bill (.Platalea leucorodia ) is perhaps more 
grotesque in appearance than either of the preceding 
species, if we choose to judge it by the wonderful bill it 
supports. It is found in many parts of Europe, Asia 
and Africa, South America, and the coast of Florida, 
always inhabiting marshy regions like its congeners. The 
beak is nearly one foot long, flat, and is spatulate at the 
end and shaped like the bowl of a spoon. Indeed, the 
bill is often taken from the bird when dead, scraped very 
thin, well polished, sometimes set in silver, and used as 
a spoon. It builds its nest sometimes in trees, and at 
other times on the banks of streams in the thick herbage, 
which it raises above the wet by a plaster of mud. The 
color is a pure white, with rose tint about the neck, and a plume of white 
feathers pendant from the crown. The height of this bird is nearly three feet. 
The Adjutant (.Leptoptilus crumenifer ), of India, is a curious member of the 
WHALE-HEADED STORK 
{Balamiceps rex .) 
