A CYPRESS SWAMP, 49 



Here and there the land rises a little above the level of the 

 water into green mounds called " hummocks," where grow scat- 

 tered palmettoes, waving their palm-like crests above the sur- 

 rounding trees. Here the great ivory-billed woodpecker, the 

 largest and most beautiful of his race, may perhaps be heard 

 knocking with his great white beak to rout out the palmetto- 

 borer. In the fringe of buttonwood, and other brush about 

 the edges of the hummocks, herons breed, or did breed before 

 they were so nearly exterminated for millinery. There was a 

 time when hundreds and thousands of them — the great blue 

 Ward's heron, nearly like our largest heron of the North, the 

 medium-sized reddish egret, the little blue heron, and the 

 little white egret, with the whole tribe of night herons 



— used to be here in countless numbers, building their 

 loose platforms of sticks among the branches, and keeping 

 their awkward guard over the beautiful blue-green eggs and 

 squabby young. What a clamor rose ! What a smell of de- 

 cayed fish from the fragments dropped beneath the nests ! A 

 few remnants of the former host remain still and breed in the 

 bushes. The fish-crows lurk about picking up the leavings on 

 the ground, or stealing an egg or a young heron from the nest 

 when they can. The boat-tailed grackle, — the " jackdaw " of 

 the South, — croaks in the willows, and a Florida white- 

 breasted nuthatch, inspecting the larger trees, threads his way 

 up and down, indifferent which end of him is uppermost. It 

 may be that a flock of wdiite ibises, distinguished from the 

 white herons by their black wing-tips and outstretched necks, 

 a roseate spoon-bill, — the " pink curlew " of the South, a 

 great bald-headed wood ibis, — locally known as a " gannet," 



— or a hoarse-voiced brown crane will pass by where they 

 can be seen through the tree-tops. 



And off in the distance, low down among the water-plants 



