Bird Life Big Cypress Swamp Region 93 



reservation down at the edge of the Everglades about eighty- 

 miles southeast of Fort Myers. They are under the control 

 of a government agent, but do little or no work, depending 

 largely on otter and alligator hunting to pick up a few 

 dollars. For several years back the alligator market has been 

 very flat, and they find plume hunting the more lucrative. 

 We camped with an Indian one evening a few miles south 

 of the Ocaloacoochee Slough, who informed me he had shot 

 eight plumes that season, which he had sold at Miami for 

 $8.00 apiece, bringing him in rather a tidy sum. Incidentally 

 I had the pleasure of dining on palmetto cabbage as pre- 

 pared a la Seminole, and an excellent dish I found it. 



The subject would not be complete without a word or two 

 about insect pests. The mosquitoes are without number. As 

 soon as darkness falls they simply arise in swarms. Sleeping 

 without a bar, and a cheesecloth one at that, is out of the 

 question. Even the Seminoles use them. The steady hum 

 of mosquitoes hovering just outside your bar becomes merely 

 a part of life. The horse flies of this region are the last 

 word. In April it is necessary to wrap a horse in burlap 

 when used, and even then they get to them pretty hard. 

 Around camp a horse will stand right up in a smudge all 

 day, and trust to feeding at night. The cattle are forced to 

 bunch together and retire into the cypress swamps during 

 the middle of the day. Even man is not entirely exempt. 

 A couple of times when dining somewhat en dishabille after 

 a wade in the swamp we w^ere forced to hustle out our shoes, 

 etc., for protection. 



In the following list of resident species I have aimed to 

 name only those that I actually found breeding or observed 

 under circumstances which made it seem fairly certain they 

 were doing so. The winter of 1912 and 1913 was unusually 

 warm and the spring early, which had its effect on the nesting 

 of many of the species, causing them to begin in some cases 

 several weeks earlier than in ordinary seasons. 



1. Aiihinga anhinga. Water Turkey. Some four or five hundred 

 were breeding at the Corkscrew rookery. On my first trip into the 

 swamp, March 16th, most of the nests contained eggs, but some of the 



