All the darters are native to eastern North America. They live near the bottom of clear streams, darting quickly about when feeding or when disturbed.

They prey on such small aquatic animals as insects and worms. Like other members of the family, darters possess two dorsal fins.

Their size ranges from 2. Some darters are among the most brightly coloured fishes in North America, the males becoming especially colourful during the spring breeding season.

Spawning habits vary. ZA: Air Force. Archived from the original on 7 May Archived from the original on 23 September Retrieved 20 August Engineering News.

Archived from the original on 24 March Retrieved 18 September Jane's Defence Weekly. BAE Systems. Archived from the original PDF on 13 October Retrieved 6 March Flight Global.

Archived from the original on 10 July Retrieved 18 July Archived from the original on 2 March When one partner comes to relieve the other at the nest, males and females use the same display the male employs during courtship; during changeovers, the birds may also " yawn " at each other.

The nests are made of twigs and lined with leaves; they are built in trees or reeds, usually near water. Typically, the male gathers nesting material and brings it to the female, which does most of the actual construction work.

Nest construction takes only a few days about three at most , and the pairs copulate at the nest site. The clutch size is two to six eggs usually about four which have a pale green color.

The eggs are laid within 24—48 hours and incubated for 25 to 30 days, starting after the first has been laid; they hatch asynchronously.

To provide warmth to the eggs, the parents will cover them with their large webbed feet, because like their relatives they lack a brood patch. The last young to hatch will usually starve in years with little food available.

Bi-parental care is given and the young are considered altricial. They are fed by regurgitation of partly digested food when young, switching to entire food items as they grow older.

After fledging , the young are fed for about two more weeks while they learn to hunt for themselves. These birds reach sexual maturity by about two years, and generally live to around nine years.

The maximum possible lifespan of darters seems to be about sixteen years. Darter eggs are edible and considered delicious by some; they are locally collected by humans as food.

The adults are also eaten occasionally, as they are rather meaty birds comparable to a domestic duck ; like other fish-eating birds such as cormorants or seaducks they do not taste particularly good though.

Darter eggs and nestlings are also collected in a few places to raise the young. Sometimes this is done for food, but some nomads in Assam and Bengal train tame darters to be employed as in cormorant fishing.

With an increasing number of nomads settling down in recent decades, this cultural heritage is in danger of being lost. On the other hand, as evidenced by the etymology of "anhinga" detailed above, the Tupi seem to have considered the anhinga a kind of bird of ill omen.

The genus Anhinga was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in with the anhinga or American darter Anhinga anhinga as the type species.

However, in its first documented use as an English term in , it referred to an Old World darter. Ever since, it has also been used for the modern genus Anhinga as a whole.

This family is very closely related to the other families in the suborder Sulae , i. Cormorants and darters are extremely similar as regards their body and leg skeletons and may be sister taxa.

In fact, several darter fossils were initially believed to be cormorants or shags see below. Some earlier authors included the darters in the Phalacrocoracidae as subfamily Anhingina', but this is nowadays generally considered overlumping.

However, as this agrees quite well with the fossil evidence [16] some unite the Anhingidae and Phalacrocoracidae in a superfamily Phalacrocoracoidea.

The Sulae are also united by their characteristic display behavior, which agrees with the phylogeny as laid out by anatomical and DNA sequence data.

While the darters' lack of many display behaviors is shared with gannets and that of a few with cormorants , these are all symplesiomorphies that are absent in frigatebirds , tropicbirds and pelicans also.

Like cormorants but unlike other birds, darters use their hyoid bone to stretch the gular sac in display. Whether the pointing display of mates is another synapomorphy of darters and cormorants that was dropped again in some of the latter, or whether it evolved independently in darters and those cormorants that do it, is not clear.

The male raised-wing display seems to be a synapomorphy of the Sulae; like almost all cormorants and shags but unlike almost all gannets and boobies, darters keep their wrists bent as they lift the wings in display, but their alternating wing-waving, which they also show before take-off, is unique.

That they often balance with their outstretched wings during walking is probably an autapomorphy of darters, necessitated by their being plumper than the other Sulae.

The Sulae were traditionally included in the Pelecaniformes , then a paraphyletic group of " higher waterbirds ". Pad Printing Services We can pad print a permanent ink on a variety of materials from plastic, to metal, and glass, as well as many complex shapes like a golf ball and other curved surfaces.

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