NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 23 



Casual Records. — Although the spoonbill is resident throughout its 

 breeding range, small flocks and solitary birds have been recorded 

 from long distances both to the north and to the south. A greatly 

 emaciated specimen was collected near Kidney Cove and the remains 

 of a second were found at Whalebone Bay, Falkland Islands, in July, 

 1860, while Sclater and Hudson record a specimen from the Straits of 

 Magellan. 



In the United States stragglers have been taken or noted in Cali- 

 fornia (San Bernardino, June 20, 1903); Utah (Wendovcr, July 2, 

 1919); Colorado (Howardsville, June, 1888, and Pueblo, August, 

 1890); Kansas (Douglas, March 20,1899); Wisconsin, (near Janes- 

 ville, August, 1845); Indiana (Vincennes, spring of 1856, and Port- 

 land, July 14, 1889), and South Carolina (Charleston, June, 1879, 

 and Yemassee, fall of 1885). 



Egg dates. — Florida: 25 records, January 4 to June 6; 13 records, 

 January 16 to May 1. Louisiana: 8 records, May 22 to June 2. 



Family THRESKIONITHIDAE, Ibises. 



GUARA ALBA (Linnaeus) 

 WHITE IBIS 



HABITS 



The sluggish upper waters of the St. Johns River in Florida are 

 spread out into extensive marshes, broad lakes, and small ponds, choked 

 with water hyacinths, "lettuce," and "bonnets," and dotted with 

 floating boggy islets or more substantial islands overgrown with wil- 

 low thickets. Here we found a paradise for water birds, many miles 

 from the haunts of man, in which Florida ducks and various species 

 of herons and gallinules were breeding in security. It was a joy 

 to watch the graceful aerial evolutions of the stately wood ibises and 

 to mark the morning and evening flights of the white ibises between 

 their feeding ground and their rookeries in distant swampy thickets. 

 Sometimes in large, loose flocks and sometimes in long, straggling 

 lines, they were always recognizable by their snowy wliiteness and 

 their rapid wing beats. Wherever we went in southern Florida we 

 frequently found them on inland lakes and streams, feeding in the 

 shallow, muddy waters, or flying out ahead of us as we navigated 

 the narrow creeks in the mangrove swamps. Once I suprised a large 

 flock of them in a little sunlit, muddy pool in a big cypress swamp; 

 they were feeding on the muddy shores, dozing on the fallen logs or 

 preening their feathers as they sat on tlie stumps and the branches of 

 the surrounding trees; what a cloud of dazzling whiteness and what 

 a clatter of many black-tipped wings, as they all rose and went dodg- 

 ing off among the trees. 



But, perhaps, my most interesting experience with the white ibis 

 was in Texas, in 1923, whereafter much eft'ort we succeeded in locating 



