BIRDS OF CUBA 33 



resting on a firm, shallow, limestone basin or substratum. Among them 

 are a few open lakes, but generally the ooze supports a sort of half-flioating 

 vegetation of grass and reeds, with clumps of willows, and many of the 

 pools are so choked with aquatic vegetation that they show no open water 

 at all. This enormous territory offers tempting soil and is in imminent 

 danger of being completely drained. It has been reduced in size already 

 by drainage. When cane is planted in the Cienaga, the last chapter will 

 be written in the Cuban history of the Glossy Ibis and other splendid 

 birds. Day after day I rested late in the afternoon under some trees which 

 allowed uninterrupted vision far out over the open marsh, and watched 

 for the bands of Ibises which fed regularly along the drier shores, where in 

 fact cattle also wandered to eat the succulent hyacinths stranded along 

 the marge. Nor man nor beast dared venture far out on the tembladera, 

 for this skim of vegetation rippled and sagged, and to break through spelt 

 oblivion. The Ibises came regularly from the southwestern horizon in 

 wavering lines, perhaps three or four hundred in all. They alit upon the 

 tembladera and began to work shoreward. Their method of progression was 

 always the same — the birds behind hopping up, flapping a half dozen 

 aletazos (wing-beats), and then alighting just in front of the foremost of the 

 walking band. This was constantly repeated as the birds ran along, probing 

 the deep vegetation for snails and insects. They were really shy, and it was 

 only after uncomfortable hiding and interminable waiting that a few 

 specimens were secured. Usually the bands would jump into the air as 

 one bird, and wheel about, when their line of progress in feeding brought 

 them dangerously near a clump of trees. 



I believe this is the only band, or at least part of the only colony, in 

 Cuba. Gundlach only once saw a flock, also in the Cienaga, and saw a 

 young bird in a lake near Cardenas and once got one from the Havana 

 market. It has been recorded also only once from the Province of Oriente 

 (Ramsden, Auk, vol. 30, p. 368, 1913.) 



I have not been to San Francisco de Morales since 191 5, and 

 that year clearing the forest about the edge of the open country had begun 

 (see Plate III). This forest, then the home of bands of Parrots and one 

 of the last resorts of the rarer Ground Pigeons, is probably now wholly 

 felled. The Plegades, however, probably nest in some small 'cayo' far out 

 in the Cienaga, out of sight of land, so to speak; and until the Swamp is 

 drained they probably are safe from extermination. In fact their band 

 probably will survive longer than the tiny remnant of the birds which 

 formerly were seen in Florida. When I was a boy, bands of Glossy Ibis 

 passed daily up and down over Lake Washington and along the upper 

 St. John's River. Today the bird has wholly disappeared from this entire 

 territory. 



