SPREAD OF THE CATTLE EGRET — SPRUNT 267 



taken "in the autumn" aboard a fishing boat off the Grand Banlis of 

 Newfoundland ! Fortunately it was preserved and the skin shown 

 to Roger Peterson and James Fisher, in April 1953, by Leslie Tuck, 

 Dominion wildlife officer. This constitutes the first record for 

 Canada (Audubon Mag., vol. 56, No. 1, p. 6, January-February 1954) . 

 Thus, in the year 1952 the cattle egret was seen, or obtained, from 

 the extremes of south-central Florida to Newfoundland ! 



1953. — The first birds of 1953 were reported by Stimson who, on 

 February 11, saw several near Bear Beach (south shore of Lake 

 Okeechobee). The next day Audubon Warden Glenn Chandler, sta- 

 tioned at Okeechobee and long since alerted to watch for the species, 

 came to my house in Okeechobee with the news that he had just seen 

 his first specimen at Eagle Bay Ranch, in the same pasture where 

 Borden had taken his photographs. On the 13th Mrs. Sprunt saw 

 four birds there. Samuel A. Grimes, who was visiting in Okeechobee 

 at the time, saw his first specimen on the 15th at Eagle Bay, and I saw 

 my first at the same place later in the day. 



On February 27 Dr. and Mrs. Powell Cottrille, of Jackson, Mich., 

 photographed 12 birds near Belle Glade, and from then on, through 

 March, the bird was seen by every Audubon wildlife tour group, as 

 many as 25 being seen at a time. All these observations occurred in 

 the Eagle Bay area. The population of the northern lake shore 

 group was, as near as Stimson, Grimes, and I could figure, about 

 50 birds. It was known that the numbers on the south shore (Belle 

 Glade to Clewiston) were higher, but how much so was uncertain. 



May 5, 1953, was a memorable day in American ornithology. On 

 that day Grimes and Glenn Chandler found the first cattle-egret nest 

 in North America. It was in a heron rookery on King's Bar, an island 

 in Lake Okeechobee, 3 miles off the mouth of the Kissimmee River. 

 It held one egg and was photographed by Grimes. Chandler at- 

 tempted to show this nest to Roger Peterson and James Fisher a few 

 days later, but it had fallen out of the willow in which it had been 

 built and crumpled in the water beneath. A snowy-egret nest close 

 by was mistakenly pointed out by Chandler as that of the cattle egret 

 before the collapse of the latter was discovered. 



On May 30 Grimes returned to the rookery, accompanied by Herbert 

 L. Stoddard, and five more nests were found. Stoddard obtained a 

 male cattle egret, the first specimen to be taken in Florida. Thus a 

 new species was added to the breeding avifauna of a continent. 



It was also in this month (May) that the species appeared in Vir- 

 ginia for the first time. Two birds were seen on the Chincoteague 

 Wildlife Refuge (eastern shore) on May 13 by J. H. Buckalew, then 

 refuge manager. 



^ During the late summer and fall of 1953 Chandler saw very few 

 birds on the north shore of Okeechobee, which seems strange. How- 



