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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Fish, Feathers and Oil : The Sunday Statesman : 19 May 2019
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FISH, FEATHERS AND OIL

" FISH as everyone knows, lives in the water and naturally the creatures that live by hunting them have to seek their prey beneath the surface, in rivers and lakes and estuaries. However, not all these hunters, particularly among the birds, swim submerged in hunting their prey.

Egrets and Herons and their tribes wade in the shallows, catching their victims with a lightning down-ward thrust of their beaks, their long, retracted necks being violently extended to power the movement.

Kingfishers and Raptorial fish-eaters ( such as Sea Eagles and Ospreys ) plunge down from the air at the surfacing fish, grabbing the prey in their beaks and talons, and Pelicans often hunt in company (as cormorants also do at times) driving the fish towards one another and scooping them up in their capacious beaks.

The Darter, however, is a true underwater hunter, and a bird that hunts alone. It drops quietly from its perch into the water with hardly so much as a splash, and goes scouting for fish under water, lifting its dagger-billed head and long, snaky, powerfully-kinked neck above the surface from time to time to breathe or to have a look around, or to swallow its catch - the popular name that it has, " Snake-bird ", come from the resemblance that it has then to a snake in the water raising its head above the surface.

It does not spear its prey, spitting it through on the pointed bill, as was once supposed but catches it like any other fish-eater, between its mandibles. It swallows its prey in the air, raising its head above the surface, and flicking the fish deftly into the air to catch it, usually head down and swallow it.

After a spell of hunting, it leaves the water and flies up to some convenient perch, an exposed branch of a waterside tree or a column or deadwood projecting from the surface, and spreading its ample wing and long tail, sits airing them. And when they are properly dry, it oils its plumage carefully, rubbing its bill over the gland just above the tail to smear it with oil, and then rubbing it all over its feathers.

A water-bird does not take kindly to overmuch oiling of its plumage, for once the delicate but firm inter-meshing of the hair-like bards that make up each feather gets clogged with oil, the bird cannot fly and loses the airiness of its feathers. It is because of this the pollution of the sea with waste oil from coastal factories kills off great numbers of oceanic birds. What is needed is just a little oil on the feathers, to keep the water from rendering them soggy, and not too much of it, and the oil-gland of the bird produces the right grade and quantity needed for this thin insulating film.

Cormorants (close relative of the Darter) have the same habit. After a spell of underwater hunting, they too sit atop exposed perches and hangout their wings to dry before oiling the plumage. But they lack dagger bill and long, strong snaky neck, and almost reptilian plumage pattern of the Darter."

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 26 July 1970.
The photograph of a waterbird hanging out its wings for drying has not been reproduced here.