GATHERING BIRDS’ EGGS IN FLORIDA 
It’s quite a change from a New England to a Florida 
midwinter. It was three weeks before there was even 
a chance to find any birds’ eggs. So the Captain and I 
pitched camp on the banks of the upper St. John’s 
River. It was a rest, just to lie in the sand and know 
you didn’t have to do anything. 
Our tent gleamed white among the live oaks. The St. 
John’s River rippled slowly by, ten feet from our front 
door. Deer tracks were everywhere. We started 
several deer at various times when quail hunting, but 
always in the worst possible tangles of brambles and 
trees. Unfortunately we had no buckshot or anything 
larger than number eight shot. 
The trees around our camp were alive with semi- 
tropical birds of all sizes and colors. Black and white 
and snow white ibis, with pink bills, were flying about 
in flocks. These long-legged birds, apparently marsh 
waders, were clumsily alighting in the tree tops. So 
many would land sometimes on the same branch that 
it would slowly bend until the whole bunch, loosing all 
holds, would go sliding off, only to fly fluttering and 
screaming to another tree. 
Ducks, mostly small divers, water turkeys, and vari- 
ous members of the heron family were feeding close 
inshore or flying up and down the river. The most in- 
teresting of the birds, perhaps, were the flocks of green 
and yellow Carolina parrakeets, miniature parrots, that 
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