Crossword clues for anhinga
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Anhinga \An*hin"ga\, n. [Pg.] (Zo["o]l.) An aquatic bird of the southern United States ( Platus anhinga); the darter, or snakebird.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
American fishing bird (also called the snake-bird), 1769, from a Tupi word which sometimes is said to mean "snake-bird."
Wiktionary
n. 1 A fish-eating bird, ''Anhinga anhinga'', from North America having a thin, pointed bill and long, thin neck. 2 A bird of the family Anhingidae.
WordNet
Wikipedia
The anhinga (; Anhinga anhinga), sometimes called snakebird, darter, American darter, or water turkey, is a water bird of the warmer parts of the Americas. The word anhinga comes from the Brazilian Tupi language and means devil bird or snake bird. When swimming the origin of the name snakebird is apparent: only the colored neck appears above water so the bird looks like a snake ready to strike. They do not have external nares (nostrils) and breathe solely through their epiglottis.
The anhinga is placed in the darter family, Anhingidae, and is closely related to Indian (Anhinga melanogaster), African (A. rufa), and Australian (A. novaehollandiae) darters. Like other darters, the anhinga hunts by spearing fishes and other small prey using its sharp, slender beak.
Usage examples of "anhinga".
Above the tannin-dyed waters, an anhinga roosted in a wax myrtle and spread its wings to dry.
I noticed it first when we were lying in the wholly sunless estuary of the River Plate, having sent the tender over that vast and as far as I could see birdless waste to Buenos Aires, carrying among other burdens a message to you in which I pointed out the extraordinary contrast between your African water, teeming with both familiar and wildly exotic duck, geese, anhingas, waders from the most minute of stints to Ardea goliath, and this prodigious desert, inhabited perhaps to the extreme limit of my glass by one moulting black-crested grebe.
A pair of blackand-red anhingas watched him from a nearby tree, craning their snaky necks.
Trees were gray-green and gray-brown, the occasional heron white-gray, and gators and anhingas so gray as to be rendered invisible.
Its feathers were so waterlogged, the primitive, short-tailed bird made it only as far as the top of a nearby shrub, where it spread wings to dry in the manner of cormorants or anhingas.
There was indeed a splendid wealth of birds on the water, including some very, very old friends such as wigeon, tufted duck, mallard and shoveller, perfectly at home among the neat little pygmy geese, knob-billed and spur-winged geese, white-faced tree-duck and the odd anhingas, to say nothing of the blue-breasted kingfisher that darted overhead and the steady patrol of vultures in the upper sky.