I goo] Incursion into Florida. 105 



In this bay, too, we saw the first Porpoises, which played 

 under the very bows of the advancing- steamer, and whose dorsal 

 fins were to be seen in many directions, rising and then sinking 

 beneath the water. 



Among the very small birds, one of the most interesting was 

 the Brown-headed Nuthatch, which was confined exclusively to the 

 pine lands and was not very common there, but when one did 

 meet with a little band of them they were most interesting-. Their 

 habits, and particularly their happy call-notes, show a strong 

 resemblance to those of the Pigmy Nuthatch of British Columbia, 

 and certainly these two are the noisest birds of their size I ever met. 

 When two or three of them get chattering at once they really 

 make enough noise for a whole flock of ordinary birds, and in the 

 west I was once deceived by the Pigmy into thinking there must 

 be several Red Squirrels chattering near by. After a shot the 

 Brown -headed Nuthatches always flew and were very quiet, so 

 that it was with difficulty that I succeeded in obtaining two or 

 three specimens. 



The pine barrens also held, in troops, a large number of 

 warblers, mostly Pine and Palm, both of them feeding on the 

 ground and constantly rising from the rear rank and flying over 

 to the front. But the only other new and striking bird of the bar- 

 rens wasthe Cockaded Woodpecker, which is black and white, some 

 what after the pattern of our Hairy Woodpecker, only blacker. The 

 fuUplumaged male, which unfortunately I did not meet, has a large 

 red patch on each side of the head, but in all my birds this patch 

 was white. This bird has an interesting note, something like 

 that of the Red-bellied Woodpecker with which it associated. 



Throughout all Northern Florida the most abundant bird was 

 the Myrtle Warbler, and in the shade trees of Ste. Augustine it 

 fairly swarmed. The'Shrikes, too, were quite common, and very 

 tame, paying only the slightest attention to the casual passer, and 

 if alarmed soon returning to the same perch. Some of them may- 

 have been the southern variety, but the only one I shot was the 

 same that we have in Ontario in summer. 



Four birds whose notes the visitor does not soon disentangle 

 are the Cardinal, Tufted Tit, Carolina Wren and Mocking-bird. 



