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Updated: June 28, 2025
We kept so close in-shore, that we could sometimes through our glasses distinguish the scissor-bills standing on the beach, and, in the distance, the buildings attached to the long staple cotton plantations for which the low islands are celebrated.
When quite beyond the inhabited parts, we found the country abounding in animal life of every form. There are upward of thirty species of birds on the river itself. There are, besides the more common, some strange varieties. Then those strange birds, the scissor-bills, with snow-white breast, jet-black coat, and red beak, sitting by day on the sand-banks, the very picture of comfort and repose.
The most remarkable of the latter were the scissor-bills, with black plumage, which went skimming along the surface, scooping up with their long lower mandible any unwary mollusc or fish of small size which came within their reach, and uttering every instant loud and discordant cries. Lejoillie told us that they were of the gull tribe, about twenty inches in length.
They had been told, according to evidence, to 'knock the blocks off the scissor-bills. Ford had taken a sick baby from its mother's arms and, holding it before the eyes of the 1500 people, had cried out: 'It's for the life of the kids we're doing this. Not a quarter of the crowd was of a type normally venturesome enough to strike, and yet, when the sheriff went after Ford, he was knocked down and kicked senseless by infuriated men.
"What brave little chaps they are!" exclaimed Leo. "See!" Some crows had approached as he spoke, when the scissor-bills flew after them and drove them off. As we drew near, however, the crows took to flight, when the little scissor-bills hung down one of their wings, and limped off, pretending to be lame.
There were also innumerable plovers, snipes, curlews, herons, and other smaller birds. A number of those strange birds, the scissor-bills, were flying about near a sandbank on one side. They had snow-white breasts, black coats, and red beaks. We observed the hollows in which their nests were placed in the sandbanks, for they made no attempt to conceal them.
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