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Show A WATER TURKEY. A correspondent of Forest and Stream, hunting on Indian River, Florida, thus describes the snake-bird, or water-turkey: On the left are islands innumerable, with tortuous channels between them, and woe betide the unlucky boatman who gets lost in the labyrinth of their intricate windings. The islands are green to the water's edge with mangrove bushes, and the scene is enlivened by the numerous water-fowl, egrets, herons, pelicans, gallionles, water-turkeys, cormorants and fish-crows, feeding near the islands, and the gulls, terns, vultures, ospreys, and man-o'-war hawks, swooping, skimming and sailing in the air above. "Look, what a queer snake!" suddenly exclaimed Frank, as he seized his gun. We saw a snake apparently wiggling out of the water several feet into the air near one of the islands. As Frank fired, part of the snake dropped on the water, while the other part took wing and flew away. "Did the snake drop the bird, or the bird drop the snake?" asked Frank. "Yes that was about the way of it," observed Ed. The explanation was quite simple. A snake-bird or water-turkey (Plotus onhinga), swimming with his long neck only out of the water, had the snake in his bill, which he dropped and flew away when Frank fired his gun. Sidney Lanier's description of this bird is quite characteristic:-"The water-turkey is the most preposterous bird within the range of ornithology. He is not a bird, he is a neck with such subordinate rights, members, appurtenances, and hereditaments thereunto appertaining as seem necessary to that end. "He has just enough stomach to arrange nourishment for his neck, just enough wings to fly painfully along with his neck, and just enough legs to keep his neck from dragging on the ground; and his neck is light colored, while the rest of him is black. |