166 “COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME” 
one day I saw an ivory-billed woodpecker fly out of a tree 
and was fortunate enough to find the hole and get two 
eggs. These birds were considerably larger than our 
common northern flicker, nearly black with some white 
wing feathers. They had a red and white topknot and 
a big ivory-colored bill. Not long afterwards I traded 
off my entire egg collection for a gun that was worth 
perhaps fifty dollars. Some years ago I was telling a 
friend, who is quite a ‘‘birdologist,’’ of my ivory-billed 
woodpecker experience and he told me that ivory-billed 
woodpecker eggs were now worth $2000 apiece! 
The spring brought swarms of mosquitoes and midges. 
They were a great nuisance. To get rid of them we left 
the land side and camped over on the outer beach, where 
a fine sea breeze was nearly always blowing. After 
getting settled in our new surroundings we decided that 
some venison would taste nicely and at daylight next 
morning we started on a deer drive. Tom was to drive 
and was dressed in his new spring suit for the occasion, 
—an old pair of trousers cut off at the knees and a flour 
sack ‘‘sweater,’’ a slit for the head and two arm-holes. 
It was decidedly becoming, but, as the Captain told 
him, ‘‘fine feathers make peacocks.’’ The outer beach 
was a mile or two wide and all sand, two thirds of it 
covered with beach grass and scrub bushes, the latter 
high enough to shelter deer. The deer swam over to the 
beach to escape flies on the mainland. 
Tom was to walk three miles up the ocean beach, turn 
the hounds into the scrub, then whoop things up gener- 
ally. Half an hour after Tom started, the Captain and 
I took our stands among the bushes. I sat with my 
back against a bunch of scrub. In front was a wind- 
swept opening, perhaps fifty yards wide, of clean, white 
sand that not even a mouse could have crossed without 
