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I N A G U A 



ibises with which some students of ornithology consider it to 

 be classed although at present it stands aloof in a family all its 

 own. Its unusual bill sets it apart from all other birds and gives 

 it a truly amazing appearance. This organ is not pink like the 

 remainder of the animal but is dull greenish-blue, shading to 

 gray at the base. The lower end is flat and spoon-shaped and 

 looks like the business end of a spatula. The creature's head 

 and nose are bare and the effect when seen head on is that of 

 a bald-headed Cyrano de Bergerac with a monstrous nose. 



Hastily gathering my pack and donning my clothes I hur- 

 ried up the coast after the flock. The flying wedge followed 

 the shoreline for a half mile and then turned inland between 

 some large clusters of mangroves. When I reached the spot 

 the birds had disappeared and I saw that they had entered the 

 mouth of a large creek which penetrated the country for some 

 distance. The waterway was Hned with hundreds of mangroves 

 which crowded together in an impenetrable barrier, denying 

 access to the shore. Somewhere in this mangrove swamp there 

 should be a nesting colony of spoonbills. It was then the fif- 

 teenth of February and from what I remembered about their 

 breeding dates the season was about due. 



To go chasing spoonbills was not an altogether reasonable 

 thing. There was still more than three quarters of the island to 

 circuit, my water was half used up and in a few days I would 

 have to start living off the country. While spoonbills were an 

 interesting feature of the landscape, they were nevertheless a 

 definite digression from the problem at hand. But the possi- 

 bility of seeing these rare and rapidly vanishing birds on their 

 breeding grounds was too good an opportunity to miss. 



The waters of the creek appeared to be shallow, not much 

 over knee depth, and I estimated that I could follow its course 

 back into the interior, gaining solid ground beyond the man- 

 groves and then cutting diagonally back to the coast again. On 



