IJ.O Scott on the Bird Rookeries of Southern Florida. [April 



where conspicuous, have been told of this region. Indeed, only 

 a few years ago bird life was so abundant about the many islands 

 dotting the harbor, that it would be difficult to exaggerate in 

 regard to their numbers. 



We were up early, for I had determined to explore every island 

 and bay about the harbor, and knew that at least a week or ten 

 days would be a short time for the work in hand. An all day's 

 sail along the northern shore of the bay, passing mangrove 

 islands which seemed to have been created for the home of many 

 species of Heron, Ibis, and other water birds which once congre- 

 gated here in vast numbers. 



Captain Baker, who sailed the sloop, an old sponger and fish- 

 erman who had been familiar with all of this country for twenty- 

 five years or more, pointed out to me among these islands four, at 

 different points, where he assured me vast rookeries had existed. 

 One of perhaps sixty acres he said he had seen so covered with 

 /White Curlew' that, to use his own words, "it looked from a 

 distance as if a big white sheet had been thrown over the man- 

 groves." And though we passed by, as I have said before, islands 

 that plainly showed, by excrement still on the ground, that once 

 countless numbers of birds had lived there, sailing probably 

 over about forty miles in all, I did not see a rookery that was 

 occupied even by a few birds, and I only saw a few stray Gulls, 

 Pelicans, and two Herons in the whole day's cruise. About four 

 o'clock, p.m., we reached a little settlement at the mouth of 

 Pease Creek, called Hickory Bluff, and I went ashore to get what 

 information I could regarding birds. 



The postmaster and several other citizens with whom I talked 

 all agreed that five or six years before birds had been plenty at 

 the rookeries, and that it was no trouble to get hundreds of eggs 

 to eat or to kill as many birds as one cared to. But that for the 

 past two years birds had been so persecuted, to get their ^plumes' 

 for the Northern market, that they were practically exterminated, 

 or at least driven away from all their old haunts. I further 

 learned that all of the gunners and hunters in the country round 

 had up to this year reaped a very considerable income from this 

 source. Birds were killed, and the plumes taken from the back, 

 head, and breast, and the carcass thrown to the Buzzards. Fort 

 Myers, on the Caloosahatchie, was the central local market for 

 this traffic, where several buyers were always ready to pay a high 



