Plate CCLXXI. Male.
Male with the bill light purplish-blue, white in the middle, the gular
sac orange; bare skin around the eye blue; feet light carmine above,
orange beneath; general colour of plumage brownish-black, the head,
neck, back, breast, and sides, splendent with green and purple, the
former predominating on the head, the latter on the back; wings tinged
with green; inner secondaries and tail with brown, the shafts of the
former black, of the latter brown. Female with a broad white space on
the breast, that colour extending forwards along the sides of the
neck, and encircling it about the middle; feathers of the back less
elongated, and glossy; the dark parts more tinged with brown. Young at
first covered with yellowish soft down.
_Adult_, 41, 86.
Resides constantly on and about the Florida Keys, where it breeds in
vast numbers on trees. Ranges over the Gulf of Mexico, Bays of Texas,
but rarely seen to the eastward of North Carolina.
Tachypetes Aquilus, Bonap. Syn. p. 406.
Frigate Pelican, Nutt. Man. v. ii. p. 491.
Frigate Pelican. Tachypetes Aquilis, Aud. Orn. Biog. v. iii.
p. 495; v. v. p. 684.
GENUS IV. PELECANUS, Linn. PELICAN.
Bill about thrice the length of the head, rather slender, almost
straight, depressed; upper mandible linear, depressed, convex at the
base, gradually flattened, and a little enlarged to near the end, when
it narrows, and terminates in a hooked point; ridge broad and convex
at the base, gradually narrowed and flattened beyond the middle,
separated by a groove from the sides, erect at the base, sloping
toward the edges, edges very acute, with an internal groove; lower
mandible with the angle excessively long, extending to the unguis, the
sides erect and convex, the edges thin and involute, the tip decurved.
Nostrils basal, lateral, linear, concealed by the wrinkles of the
skin. Head small, oblong; neck long, stout; body full, rather
flattened. Feet short, and very stout; tarsus short, compressed,
covered all round with hexagonal scales; toes in the same plane, all
connected by webs, first shortest, fourth longer than third. Claws
short, strong, curved, that of the third toe pectinate. Feathers of
head and neck exceedingly small, slender, downy; of the other parts
generally lanceolate and acuminate; wings very long, rather narrow,
rounded; primaries much curved. Tail short, broad, rounded, of more
than sixteen feathers. An enormous bare, extensile, gular sac; tongue
extremely small, papilliform; œsophagus excessively wide;
proventricular glands arranged in broad longitudinal series; stomach
very small, with its muscular coat thin, its epithelium smooth and
soft; a globular pyloric lobe; intestine long and narrow; cœca very
small, cylindrical; cloaca globular.