IN THE CAPE SABLE WILDERNESS 
49 
The first lake was quite a large one, several miles long. 
We poled past various little mangrove islands, starting num¬ 
bers of Brown Pelicans and Florida Cormorants from some 
of them, where they were roosting upon dead stubs at their 
shores. Then we followed a narrow channel through the man¬ 
grove forest, the connection with the next lake of the series. 
White Ibises and Yellow-crowned Night Herons kept flying 
up before us to enliven the scene. Presently we came out into 
the lake. It also was very shallow, with bare mud-flats here 
and there, on which were scattered quite a host of birds. 
Conspicuous and noisy were a flock of Laughing Gulls. Less 
conspicuous, but even more interesting to us, were the 
shore-birds, which we found abundant both in this spot and 
elsewhere during the day. Right before us upon the flat 
a fine band of the large Black-bellied Plover, and around 
them a humble host of various sandpipers. Ring-necked 
Plovers, Dowitchers, and the like, were feeding, sedately or 
nimbly, as the case might be. But, dwarfing them into insig¬ 
nificance by physical contrast, there stood sleepily a pair of 
splendid White Pelicans, with bodies as large and plump as 
the roundest pillows of the daintiest couch. We landed just 
where we were, and I skulked with my camera along the 
shore, under shelter of the forest, till I was delightfully near the 
unconscious pelicans. I was almost ready for an exposure 
when away they went, alarmed evidently by the boat. They 
alighted about a mile off out on a flat, where I stalked them 
under cover of an island and secured some telephoto pictures 
of them, though at longer range than I could have wished. 
As soon as I showed myself they flapped heavily away. 
Thus we proceeded, visiting in all four or five connecting 
lakes, examining a number of islands, but without finding any 
rookeries of breeding birds, or seeing any more White Peli¬ 
cans. These last were plenty here a month ago, but they had 
