NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 21 



wings and a glorious burst of color, they arose. Many other detachments joined 

 them until the entire flock numbered about 600. Most of these alighted some 

 2 miles off, while a few returned to their former feeding ground. The spoonbills 

 now leave the vicinity of Corpus Christi the latter part of February, and though 

 a few stragglers sometimes remain all the year, none have been known to breed 

 on the Texas coast of late years. This state of affairs is probably due to their 

 persecution and to the destruction of the forests between Corpus Christi and 

 Brownsville, which used to reach nearer the river mouths, affording this formerly 

 abundant species suitable rookery sites. It is probable that most of the flock of 

 birds seen on Nueces Bay were raised somewhere on the coast south of Browns- 

 ville. After raising their young in comparative safety, they return yearly to 

 this spot to spend the summer and early winter months, arriving in considerable 

 numbers, even so early as the latter part of April, and attaining their maximum 

 numbers in the latter part of May. Their evident attachment to the vicinity of 

 Nueces Baj' must be due to the facilities it affords them in the great item of food 

 Buppl}', for the reception accorded these birds by Corpus Christi gunners is far 

 from encouraging. 



The spoonbills which breed in southern Florida wander far north- 

 ward after the breeding season; Audubon (1840) took one 10 miles 

 north of Charleston, vSouth Carolina, and says: 



The spoonbills are so sensible of cold, that those which spend the winter on 

 the Keys, near Cape Sable in Florida, rarely leave those parts for the neighbor- 

 hood of St. Augustine before the first days of March. But after this you may 

 find them along inost of the water courses running parallel to the coast, and 

 distant about half a mile or a mile from it. I saw none on any part of the St. 

 John's river; and from all the answers which I obtained to my various inquiries 

 respecting this bird, I feel confident that it never breeds in the interior of the 

 peninsula, nor is ever seen there in winter. The roseate spoonbill is found 

 for the most part along the marshy and muddy borders of estuaries, the mouths 

 of rivers, ponds, or sea islands or keys partially overgrown with bushes, and 

 perhaps still more commonly along the shores of those singular salt-water bayous 

 so abundant within a mile or so of the shores, where they can reside and breed 

 in perfect security in the midst of an abundance of food. It is more or less 

 gregario'is at all seasons, and it is rare to meet with fewer than half a dozen to- 

 gether, unless they have been dispersed by a tempest, in which case one of them 

 is now and then found in a situation where you would least expect it. At the ap- 

 proach of the breeding season, these small flocks collect to form great bodies, as is 

 the manner of the ibises, and resort to their former places of residence, to which 

 they regularly return, like herons. 



Warden Krocgel, of Pelican Island, saw a flock of 60, in June, 1913, 

 on the Mesquite Inlet Reservation, far north of the breeding range 

 of this species. 



Winter. — In southern Florida the roseate spoonbill is resident all 

 the year round, but it frequents different localities in winter and 

 wanders about more, feeding in large flocks in the shallows of the 

 Bay of Florida, in the muddy inlets along the shore and in the shal- 

 low lakes and sloughs near the coast. One of their favorite feeding 

 grounds is a large, so-called "slough" near Cape Sable, but very 

 different in character from the typical western prairie slough. This 

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