How to know the Indian Waders.	19
mage being as it were bleached for a wedding garment.
The bill is light horn colour, the eyes grey or light brown
and the legs flesh colour. The wing is under seventeen
inches, and the shank under six. Young birds present
some important differences. Their plumage is like that
of old birds when in undress, but browner on the back;
the face and throat are completely feathered except a
streak from the bill to the eye, ^ the said eye being dark, and
the bill is much shorter than in old birds, does not gape
in the middle, but fits accurately throughout, and is black
hi colour. Mr. F. E. Beddard, Prosector to the Zoologi-
cal Society, who has lately dissected the bird for the first
time, finds also that in a young bird there are no horny
growths inside the tip.
This species used to be called the Shell-Ibis, but Dr.
Blanford has very properly changed the name to Open-
bill, as the bird is certainly a Stork and not an Ibis. It
does, however, differ from other Storks in feeding almost
exclusively on shell*fish, and for this reason is not very easy
to keep in confinement on other food, whereas most Storks
will thrive well 011 any animal garbage, and even eat cook-
ed vegetable food. Birds of the present species sometimes
extract the mollusc from its shell whole as Jerdon states,
and as I have seen ; but the shell may also be broken or
crushed by them, and it is this habit which is said to cause
the bill to gape in time. I have seen the bills of captive
larks worn away similarly by too much cracking of seeds;
but in this case it was chiefly the upper chap that suffered,
while in the Open-bill it is stated to be the lower. But a
bird that grew up in the Calcutta Zoological Gardens,
where it could hardly have got enough shell fish to grind
down its beak, also showed the gaps; and I am inclined
to think that it is a natural malformation, similar to what
occurs in the coarser-billed breeds of tame pigeons, such
as the Bagdadi or Dragoon and the Carrier.* "
* A writer in the •* Feathered World " states that if two extra
stout billed Carriers are paired, the young are likely to show this
defect.