72 
WILD WINGS 
deposited. All the eggs of the ibises seemed to be fresh^ 
and many of the sets yet incomplete. In view of finding, in 
the other ibis rookery visited, the young already well grown, 
I am inclined to believe that 
these ibises may have re¬ 
cently come to this island 
from some other rookery, 
that had been broken up, 
and were trying to raise 
belated broods. 
While I was among the 
ibis nests, a harsh series of 
rattling grunts arrested my 
attention, whose author I 
found to be an American Egret, that flew back and forth 
over me, and then alighted in a tree-top to watch. It was 
a most beautiful sight, the tall, slender white bird, with long, 
graceful neck, and a back covered with the elegant “ aigrette ” 
plumes that drooped down over the wings — the prize of 
the merciless plume-hunter. Here was the nest, about fifteen 
feet up a mangrove. In it were three little egrets, rather 
ragged and uncouth in their incipient white plumage, yet 
(|uaint and interesting. Not far away were several other 
nests of this species, all containing two or three young. 
Two weeks loefore, the rest of my party had found a few 
nests with eggs, but now all were hatched. One family of 
three young were large enough to fly a little, and could just 
flutter from tree to tree, out of my reach. Another brood of 
two were at the climbing stage, but I drove them back to 
the nest, and managed to photograph them with the refle.x 
camera in the open sunlight that bathed the tops of the 
mangroves. The eggs of the egret are light greenish blue, 
like most herons’ eggs. 
YOUNG FLORIDA CORMORANTS. 
