72 



WILD WINGS 



■LORIDA t OKMOKAN IS. 



deposited. All the eggs of the ibises seemed to be fresh, 

 and many of the sets yet incomplete. In view of finding, in 

 the other ibis rookery visited, the young already well grown, 



I am inclined to believe that 

 these ibises may have re- 

 cently come to this island 

 from some other rookery, 

 that had been broken up, 

 and were trying to raise 

 belated broods. 



While I was among the 

 ibis nests, a harsh series of 

 rattling grunts arrested my 

 attention, whose author I 

 found to be an American Egret, that flew back and forth 

 over me, and then alighted in a tree-top to watch. It was 

 a most beautiful sight, the tall, slender white bird, with long, 

 graceful neck, and a back covered with the elegant " aigrette " 

 ])lumes that drooped down over the wings — the prize of 

 the merciless plume-hunter. Here was the nest, about fifteen 

 feet up a mangrove. In it were three little egrets, rather 

 ragged and uncouth in their incipient white plumage, yet 

 cjuaint and interesting. Not far away were several other 

 nests of this species, all containing two or three young. 

 Two weeks before, the rest of my party had found a few 

 nests with eggs, but now all were hatched. One family of 

 three young were large enough to fly a little, and could just 

 flutter from tree to tree, out of my reach. Another brood of 

 two were at the climbing stage, but I drove them back to 

 the nest, and managed to photograph them with the reflex 

 camera in the open sunlight that bathed the tops of the 

 mangroves. The eggs of the egret are light greenish blue, 

 like most herons' eggs. 



