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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



I knew better — they were after egrets 

 and came to see if I was on watch. I 

 told them if they saw anyone after 

 phnnes to pass the word that I would 

 shoot on sight any man with a gun who 

 attempted to enter the Corkscrew, and 

 I would do it too," he added, as he tapped 

 the barrel of his Winchester. "It is 

 terrible to hear the young birds calling 

 for food after the old ones have been 

 killed to get the feathers for rich women 

 to wear, and I am not going to have my 

 birds sacrificed that way." 



This is a region where the Audubon 

 warden must constantly keep his lonely 

 watch, for should he leave even for a 

 short time there would be danger of the 

 colony being raided and all the protec- 

 tive work of many seasons wiped out. 

 A successful shooting trip of plume hun- 

 ters to the Corkscrew might well net the 

 gunners as much as five thousand dollars, 

 and this, in a country where money is 

 scarce, would mean a magnificent for- 

 tune. The warden is fully alive to this 

 fact, and is ever on the alert. Many of 

 the plume hunters are desperate men, 

 and he never knows what moment he 

 may need to grasp his rifle and defend 

 his life, away down there in the shadows 

 of the Big Cypress, where the alligators 



and vultures would make short shrift 

 of his remains. 



He remembers, as he goes his rounds 

 among the birds day by day, or lies in 

 his tent at night, that a little way to the 

 south on a lonely sand key, lies buried 

 Guy Bradley, who was done to death by 

 plume hunters while guarding for the 

 Audubon Society the Cuthbert egret 

 rookery, and that even at this time, 

 above him on Orange Lake, the warden 

 in charge carries in his body the bullet 

 from a plume gatherer's gun. Only 

 three days before my visit, Greene's 

 nearest brother warden, on duty at the 

 Alligator Bay colony, had a desperate 

 rifle battle with four poachers who, in 

 defiance of law and decency, attempted 

 to shoot the egrets which he was there 

 to guard. 



I like to think of Greene as I saw him 

 the last night in camp, his brown lean 

 face aglow with interest as he told me 

 many things about the birds he guarded. 

 The next day I would leave him, and 

 night after night he would sit by his fire, 

 a lonely representative of the Audubon 

 Society away down there on the edge 

 of the Big Cypress, standing as best he 

 could between the lives of the birds he 

 loved and the insatiable greed of fashion. 



Army of young white pelicans at Klamath Lake reservation, Oregon 



