Glimpses of Indian Birds

ess cormorant, sew on the head and neck of a heron, and you will have produced a very fair imitation of the Indian snake-bird. If during the operation you happen to have dislocated one of

the snake-bird is probably without peer. This is not surprising, since it possesses the swimming and diving apparatus of the cormorant, the

body submerged, showing only the upper neck above the surface. Every now and again it completely disappears from view. After remaining submerged for several seconds the head reappears with a small fish projecting from the bill. The fish is forthwith thrown a little way into the air, and then caught and sw

rom a perch like a kingfisher. I have not observed the bird behav

a water-snake when the bird swims, as it often does, with the body submerged. If danger threatens the bird usually sinks in the water un

under water for thirteen or fourteen seconds at a time, it is

during flight. When resting from its piscatorial labours it betakes itself to the edge of the jhil or to an islet and squats there to dry its plumage in the approved cormorant fashion, with wings partially, and tail fully, expanded. In this

mind salt water, for it may be found in tidal estuaries and creeks. I have seen it on the Cooum at Madras. It is, however, essentially a bird of the jhil. Needless to state

ur singly or in pairs, but according to Jerdon hundre

its nesting operations so that the young will be hatched out after the monsoon has brought into existence numbers of amphibia and crustacea on which to feed them. Accordingly, it nidificates in J

placed in low trees, babools for preference, a

land in midstream, where they had built their untidy nests on small trees about twenty feet high, and there were fresh and hard-set eggs in them in all stages of incubation, while half-fledged birds scrambled about the branches or flopped into the water at our appro

s, a race of gipsies who travel about the Eastern Bengal districts in boats, are very fond of

spicuous silvery shaft, which renders it a thing of unusual beauty. According to Jerdon these feathers constitute t