The opera-glass showed it at once to be a large bird sitting with its back toward me, and holding its wings uplifted in the familiar heraldic, e-pluribus-unum attitude of our American spread-eagle; but even then it was some seconds before I recognized it as an anhinga,water turkey,though it was a male in full nuptial garb.

I did not expect ever to see another, but the next morning, on my way up the railroad to pay a second visit to the ivory-bill's swamp, I looked up by chance,a brown thrush was singing on the telegraph wire,and saw two anhingas soaring overhead, their silvery wings glistening in the sun as they wheeled.