I38 Scott on the Bird Rookeries of Southern Florida. [April 



least two hundred wonderfully colored Spoonbills, and that the 

 numbers of the other species were many times greater. 



The numerous islands inside of the outer keys at this point are 

 mostly wooded with one or more of the several kinds of man- 

 grove, and vary in area from one to several hundred acres. The 

 two nearest the mouth of the pass are small ; the larger one may 

 have an area of seven and the smaller of not more than two acres. 

 They formed the site of the rookery. Looking carefully over both 

 I could see no birds when we anchored, but as the sun began to get 

 low in the west, a few, possibly fifty in all, shy and suspicious 

 Herons straggled in to roost on the smaller of the two Keys, and 

 a flock of Fish Crows (Corvi/s ossifragns) were the only visitors 

 at the larger. Most of the Herons were A. rjificollis tricolor, 

 but there were several A. egretta, A. candzdisszma, and A. 

 acriilca, and perhaps a dozen A. rufa, and three of the so-called 

 A. pealci. No Spoonbills, not a single White Ibis — in fact an 

 utter transformation from the happy and populous community of 

 only a few years before. 



Of other birds seen here my log only speaksof some Royal and 

 Least Terns, a flock of Willets. and a single Kingfisher. 



Sunday, May 2. We were up and away early, with a pleasant 

 northeast wind, and instead of going out of the pass again our 

 route threaded in and out among the inner islands, passing through 

 Boya Sieya into Tampa Bay proper. In Boya Sieya is an enor- 

 mous mangrove island, known throughout the region as the 

 Maximo Rookery, and also intimately associated in my mind with 

 the name of A. Lechvallier, a Frenchman, who, when I was 

 last at this point, had his home in a little house on the mainland 

 of Point Pinallas, about half a mile from this rookery. 



Being anxious to get south as rapidly as possible I did not ex- 

 amine Maximo Rookery carefully, but passing it only half a mile 

 away I could see no birds. On my return, however, I made an 

 extended search through the hundreds of acres of mangrove, and 

 will leave the subject till then. But it may be as well to state 

 distinctly here that I am very credibly informed that during his 

 several years' residence at this point, the old Frenchman and his 

 o-unners killed many thousands of the several species of birds there 

 so abundant. These were particularly the several species of 

 White Herons and countless numbers of the Brown Pelican. 



Passing on we crossed Tampa Bay to the mouth of the Manatee 



