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Updated: May 27, 2025
Great alligators open their jaws and swallow them by hundreds; jaguars come out of the forests and feed upon them; eagles and buzzards and wood ibises are there, too, to claim their share of the feast; and, if they are fortunate enough to escape all these, there are many large and ravenous fishes ready to seize them in the stream. It seems a marvel that any escape at all.
Ibis, white, change of colour of naked skin in, during the breeding season; scarlet, young of the. Ibis tantalus, age of mature plumage in; breeding in immature plumage. Ibises, decomposed feathers in; white; and black. Ichneumonidae, difference of the sexes in. Ichthyopterygia. Ichthyosaurians.
Storks, cranes, ibises, herons, pelicans, and flamingoes abound in the low, wet grounds, marshaling themselves in long files, like trained bodies of men, along the shore of the fresh-water ponds. The flamingo is called the English soldier-bird by the natives because of its habits, and its pink epaulets, which tip the body joints of its otherwise snow-white wings.
The hunters rode little stallions, and their hounds were gelded. Most of the time we were in forest or swampy jungle. Part of the time we crossed or skirted marshy plains. In one of them a herd of half- wild cattle was feeding. Herons, storks, ducks, and ibises were in these marshes, and we saw one flock of lovely roseate spoonbills.
Soon afterwards we left this place, crossed the channel, and, paddling past two islands, obtained a glimpse of the broad river between them, with a long sandy spit, on which stood several scarlet ibises and snow-white egrets. One of the islands was low and sandy, and half of it was covered with gigantic arum-trees, the often-mentioned Caladium arborescens, which presented a strange sight.
If the Egyptians chose to worship cats, ibises, and crocodiles, that was their affair, so long as they let other people alone. In Gaul, it is true, the emperor Claudius, predecessor of Nero, had put down the Druids.
After passing, in turn, the papyri, the enamels, the vases that contain human entrails, we reach the mummies of the sacred beasts: cats, ibises, dogs, hawks, all with their mummy cloths and sarcophagi; and monkeys, too, that remain grotesque even in death.
I prefer to recollect the Espartillar I knew, a place of unending spaces and glorious sunshine, with air almost as intoxicating as wine, where innumerable spurred plovers screamed raucously all day long, where the little ground-owls blinked unceasingly at the edge of their burrows; where bronze-green ibises flashed through the sunlight, and rose-coloured spoonbills trailed in pink streaks across the blue sky, as they flew in single file from one laguna to another.
Ibises half-lollingly posed on some old trunk, and gray herons motionless on one leg, solemn flamingoes who from a distance looked like red umbrellas scattered in the foliage, and phenicopters of every color, enlivened the temporary morass.
In the case of Pelicans, Cormorants, and Ibises, the young thrust their bills far down the throats of the parents to procure the regurgitated food. From this custom the ancients may have got the idea that Pelicans feed their young with their own life blood.
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