14 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES N4 xIONAL MUSEUM 



helped to destroy them, as being frequently of many acres in extent and afford- 

 ing breeding grounds to thousands of roseate spoonbills. The birds bred in Jan- 

 uary and were in the best plumage late in November and in December. They 

 do not seem to have bred north of Charlotte Harbor, so far as I am able to 

 ascertain, but immediately after the breeding season was finished, and as soon as 

 the young were able to shift for themselves, there was a great dispersal of the 

 birds to the northward, particularly along the coast, though they were common 

 at points in the interior. All this is changed. I have spent the past four winters 

 and two summers in Florida. My old hunting grounds have all been carefully 

 retraversed, some of them many times, and the roseate spoonbill is almost as 

 great a stranger to me as to my fellow workers who live the year round in 

 Massachusetts. 



Nesting. — I have twice visited one of the few remaining breeding 

 resorts of the roseate spoonbill in Florida, in 1903 and 1908. We 

 had toiled all day, dragging our skiffs over miles of mud flats, poling 

 them through several lakes and laboriously pushing and hauling 

 them through the tortuous channels of sluggish streams, choked with 

 roots and fallen tree trunks, in the almost impenetrable mangrove 

 swamps of extreme southern Florida. The afternoon was well spent 

 when we emerged on the open waters of Cuthbert Lake and saw 

 ahead of us the object of our search, a mangrove island, about a 

 mile distant, literally covered with birds. It was a beautiful sight 

 as the afternoon sun shone full upon it; hundreds of white and blue 

 herons, and a score or two of beautiful "pink curlews" could be 

 plainly seen against the dark green of the mangroves, like feathered 

 gems on a cushion of green velvet. As we drew nearer the picture 

 became more animated, we could see the birds more clearly and we 

 began to realize what a variety of birds and what a host of them the 

 far famed Cuthbert rookery contained. The taller trees in the center 

 of the island were dotted with the great white American egrets, 

 perhaps 300 or 400 of them, watching us from points of vantage; on 

 the mangroves below them, among the hundreds of white ibises, we 

 could see about 75 or 100 of the rare roseate spoonbills; the outer 

 edges of the mangroves, growing in the water, were black with 

 Florida cormorants and anhingas; and everywhere were flocks and 

 clouds of Louisiana and little blue herons. The egrets and the 

 spoonbills were the first to leave; the former rose deliberately, long 

 before we were within gunshot range, and flapped lazily away on 

 their broad white wings; the latter were equally shy, flying around 

 the island, circling to a considerable height and then flying straight 

 away, with their necks outstreched and their feet extended, in long 

 lines or in wedge-shaped flocks; we watched them longingly as they 

 faded away in the distant sky with the blush of sunset glowing 

 through their roseate wings. Then hundreds of white ibises were 

 rising from the mangroves with a mighty roar of wings and scores of 

 cormorants were dropping off the outer branches into the water. 

 When fairly in their midst, the air seemed full of the smaUer herons, 



