These long-necked and long-legged birds have a moderate bill, straight and rather compressed, which varies from slender to stout, with a lateral groove on each side of the mandible and nasal furrows about halfway down the maxilla; in _Balearica_ this feature is comparatively short. The metatarsus is scutellated in front, reticulated behind; the tibia is partly bare; the toes are short and stout, the anterior being more or less connected at the base by a {252}membrane; the hallux is small, much elevated, and furnished with a sharp hooked claw. The wings are described by different writers as long or moderate, but are certainly ample and rounded, with about thirty-three quills, of which eleven are primaries; the decomposed inner secondaries exceed the last-named, and are either lanceolate and drooping, or broad and erectile, while in _Bugeranus_ and _Tetrapteryx_ they are extraordinarily extended. The short tail has twelve rectrices. _Anthropoïdes_ has long silky auricular plumes, _Balearica_ a bristly crest and a naked gular wattle, _Bugeranus_ a feathered lappet on each side of the throat, _Antigone australasiana_ a pendulous pouch, and most species, as will be seen below, a partly bare carunculated head. The tongue is lanceolate, the nostrils pervious; while, except in _Balearica_, the trachea of the adult is convoluted within the keel of the sternum, but enters it behind the clavicles,–which are often ancylosed with it,–and not in front of them, as in certain Swans, the development varying according to the species and the age. In _Anthropoïdes_ the cavity of the keel is open laterally. The furcula is Y-shaped, the aftershaft is very small, the down is uniform in both adults and young.