Photo by Ottomar Anschütz] [Berlin.
WHITE STORKS.
The right-hand figure shows the bird making the curious clappering with its beak.
Photo by Ottomar Anschütz] [Berlin.
WHITE STORK.
A parent bird returning with a frog for its young.
The largest members of the Stork Tribe are the Adjutant-storks and Jabirus. The adjutants are also, to our eyes at least, singularly ugly birds. In spite of this very natural disadvantage, they have won a very high place in the regard of the people among whom they dwell, on account of the fact that, both in Africa and India, they perform, with the vultures, the work of scavengers. Yet there is something of quaintness about these birds, if they are watched from a distance too great to reveal the character which imparts the ugliness to which we have referred, and their actions not seldom border on the grotesque. The name Adjutant has been bestowed upon them on account of the peculiar gait, which bears a fanciful resemblance to the measured pacing of an officer on parade. Like all the Storks, they have large bodies and very long legs, but they have outstripped all their relatives in the enormous size of the beak. The features which have earned this unenviable reputation for ugliness are the peculiarly unkempt and unwashed appearance of the head and neck. These are but scantily clothed in very shabby, brown-looking down-feathers; and the neck is made still more, we might almost say, repulsive by the presence of a large bare pouch, which can be distended with air to an enormous size at will. The Arabs, on account of this pouch, call the species resident with them "The Father of the Leather Bottle." Some, however, say that the correct translation of the native name would be "The Father of the Beak." But it is not only on account of their scavenging propensities that the adjutants are esteemed, for it is from the under tail-coverts of these birds that the much-prized "marabou" or "comercolly" feathers are obtained—at least the finest kinds; for some appear to be furnished by that chief of scavengers, the vulture. More precious still "is the celebrated stone called Zahir mora, or poison-killer, of great virtue and repute as an antidote to all kinds of poison," to be procured only by splitting open the head of the bird before death. Needless to say, the existence of this stone lives only in popular superstition, though how many poor birds have fallen victims thereto is not pleasant to contemplate.
Photo by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S., Regent's Park.