Immigrants

Incredible feet, swollen knees, a body like a fat egg, a bent neck, tufted cranium, misty eyes very high and close together and a heavy spatulate appendage, blotched and yellow, more like a piece of foot gear than a nose--that was balaeniceps rex, the shoebill stork, who arrived in Manhattan last week, cabined in the officers' quarters of his steamer, from Lake No, near Khartoum, Upper Egypt. He was one of five specimens that collectors have captured in 35 years. Two of his kin died some years ago in England. Two stalk dejectedly about the zoo at Cairo. This fifth one, four feet high, maltese grey, was to tour U.S. zoos, guided by Collector George H. Bistany, who had braved malaria and homesickness to wait, near a broad spreading cactus bush in a Nile valley swamp, until the bird's mother hatched him and led him toddling forth with brothers and sisters.