NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 59 



Frederic H. Kennard has sent me some notes on a rookery fully 

 as large, if not larger, which he explored in Okaloacoochee Slough in 

 southern Florida. It was in some enormous cypress trees, 4, 5, 6, 7, 

 and even 9 feet in diameter, grown well apart, so that most of them 

 had good, spreading tops. It had been for years the place where the 

 Seminoles came for their dugouts, as it contained the biggest and 

 finest cypresses in the land. The rookery was perhaps from 100 to 

 200 yards across, and he followed it for about half a mile or more. 

 Not all the trees were occupied, but most of the good ones held 4 or 

 5 to 20 nests apiece, clear way up on the tops of the trees. It was 

 almost impossible to make any estimate of their number, even approx- 

 imately, without spending a couple of days counting their nests, 

 but there must have been several thousand flying about, or perched 

 solemnly on the tops of the trees. 



His guide, Tom Hand, estimated that there were 10,000 nests, for 

 from a tree he climbed he could see the nests extending along the 

 edge for a mile. At the other end of the rookery they all appeared 

 to be building their nests. There was an almost steady stream of 

 birds, perhaps 25 at a time, all flying to some live willows, breaking 

 oflF twigs and flying back to the rookery with them. An old bird 

 would fly up to the willows and^alight, perhaps grasping several twigs 

 in his feet, in order to get a firmer hold ; he would then saw, pull, and 

 yank at some twig with his bill; if unsuccessful, he would try another 

 twig until, at last, he could break one off and fly away with it. In 

 the rookery they frequently saw the birds flying overhead with long 

 twigs or small branches, with the leaves still on them, or with long 

 streamers of moss for nest linings. 



Among the many courtesies extended to me by Oscar E. Baynard 

 was an excellent opportunity to make an intimate acquaintance 

 with a nesting colony of wood ibises; it was not as large as the one 

 described above, but the nests were fairly accessible and the birds 

 were rather tamer than usual. In the northern part of Polk County, 

 Florida, lies a large tract of wilderness, unsettled and with no roads 

 worthy of the name; it is largely flat pine woods with numerous 

 large and small cypress ponds or swamps scattered through it. Here 

 on March 7, 1925, after a 30-mile drive over some of the toughest 

 trails I have ever driven, through woods, bogs, and cypress swamps, 

 we camped near the edge of a long cypress swamp and visited the 

 rookery in it the next day. We estimated that the colony consisted 

 of between 200 and 300 pairs of wood ibises; no other species was 

 nesting with them. We had not waded more than 75 or 100 yards 

 into the swamp, where the water averaged about knee deep, when we 

 began to see the ibises in the tree tops or on their nests. The 

 cypress trees were of fair size, 12 to 18 inches in diameter, heavily 



