WILD WINGS 
136 
the yacht, and then to the settlement, where we hired a con¬ 
veyance and drove ten miles through a region of sandy soil 
and pine forest to an old rice-plantation. There we hunted up 
the foreman, who knew the location of the rookery, in a great 
cypress swamp. We found him kind and willing, ready to 
take us to the place at once. First we tramped a mile along 
a woodland trail, when we came to an arm of muddy water 
under high, overarching trees, and a small, fiat-bottomed 
skih. Working two paddles, we glided on and soon emerged 
in a great area of cypress trees growing out of the water. 
Alligators and turtles splashed before us, and buzzards and 
ospreys wheeled overhead. From the cypress branches, with 
their delicate needle-foliage of pale green, hung the streaming 
gray moss. Pairs of Wood Ducks started up now and then 
from the water with resounding wing-beats. Bees hummed 
merrily about, and now and then were to be seen issuing 
from the hollow of some “bee-tree,” which was, no doubt, 
full of delectable honey. It was a new experience, with an 
atmosphere of weirdness and grandeur, to be gliding silently 
over the water under the shadows of moss-bearded forest 
sentinels. 
The beginning of the rookery was over a mile beyond us, 
and meanwhile we were interested in the huge nests of the 
Ospreys, built on the extreme tops of dead cypress stubs, 
thirty to sixty feet from the water. We paused by one com¬ 
paratively low down, and secured some good snap-shots as 
the angry female alighted in the nest or was leaving it. 
Though it was late in the afternoon, and a shower was 
imminent, we determined to see something of the rookery 
that night, and to explore it more thoroughly next day. So 
we paddled on, stopping all too often to push the boat off from 
some submerged snag on which we were stranded. At length 
the harsh squawking of herons became audible, and we 
