Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE STORK-LIKE BIRDS

THE BOAT-BILLS( Family Cochleariidm)

The present family comprises but a single genus (Cochlearius) and two species, the oldest known being the South American Boat-bill (C. cochlearius), which ranges from southern Brazil over Amazonia and Guiana to Colombia and Ecuador, and the Central American Boat-bill (C. zeledoni), which occurs in suitable situations from Mexico to Panama.

They are small Night Heron-like birds, sixteen and eighteen inches in length respectively, their most-marked character being the possession of an enormous bill which is greatly depressed and excessively dilated laterally, the lateral outlines being much bowed.

The bill approximates three inches in length and nearly two inches in width, and suggests at once possible kinship with the African Shoe-bill, and the naked skin between the branches of the lower jaw is dilatable into a pouch or bag.

As further characters it may be mentioned that the Boat-bills have four pairs of powder-down tracts, which serve to distinguish them from the Ardeidae, which possess but two or three pairs of such areas, while they agree with the latter in having the feathertracts very narrow, and the inner edge of the middle claw distinctly pectinated. The possession of a long nuchal crest by the Boat-bills seems another mark of relationship with the Night Herons.

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