The American Museum Journal 
Vou. VIII NOVEMBER, 1908 No: 7 
CUTHBERT ROOKERY. 
UTHBERT ROOKERY is probably the last rookery in Florida 
at all comparable with those great gatherings of nesting birds 
formerly common throughout the state. Rookeries of Ibises, 
of Cormorants, of Little Blue and Louisiana Herons and of other non- 
plume-bearing birds may still be found by those who know where to 
look for them, but at Cuthbert alone, so far as I am aware, will one 
find all the birds mentioned, together with Spoonbills and American 
and Snowy Egrets. This rookery is situated in what the maps term 
the “Great Mangrove Swamp,” which borders the Everglades at the 
southern extremity of Florida, and is about seven miles from the coast 
at a point known as Snake Bight, some twelve miles east of the settle- 
ment of Flamingo. ‘The proposed extension of the Florida East Coast 
railroad to Cape Sable would have passed within a mile or two of it. 
Cuthbert is well known to every “‘plumer,” or plume hunter, of 
South Florida. It has been ‘ 
and comparative inaccessibility, together with the absence of fresh 
‘shot out” repeatedly, but its isolation 
water make it worthy the plumer’s attention only when the progeny of 
the birds which have escaped the last raid have become sufficiently 
numerous to repay the hunter for the exertion and privation of a visit. 
The isolation of Cuthbert also makes it a refuge for birds which have 
been ‘“‘broke up” in less remote places, and it is not improbable that the 
last Snowy Egret and Roseate Spoonbill of Florida will be shot here. 
I made four attempts to reach Cuthbert Rookery before succeeding. 
In May, 1904, while en route to it, I was intercepted by Warden Bradley 
in the Keys, near Tavenier Creek, with news that the rookery had been 
“shot out.”” Under his guardianship, the “white birds” had increased 
to numbers, which, with aigrettes selling at thirty-two dollars an ounce, 
made the venture worth the risk. The warden was watched and in 
his absence his charges were slaughtered. The man who was with 
99 
