IA.2 Scott on the Bird Rookeries of Southern Florida. [April 



Tuesday, May 6. As I had been told at Hickory Bluff' that 

 the largest of the rookeries was still further up the river, we took 

 the small boat serving as our tender, and early in the morning 

 started to explore. About a mile and a half from where we had 

 anchored, on passing a sharp bend in the river, we saw a small 

 mangrove island fairly white with birds, most of which I present- 

 ly discovered to be the small White Egret {Ardea ca?ididissi- 

 ma), and with them a number of Ardca rnjicollis tricolor, and 

 a few Ardea egretta and Ardea cczrzdca. The birds were in 

 some cases still building, though some had finished their nests 

 and had laid from one to three eggs. The Ardea cccr?dea, of 

 which there were perhaps half a dozen pairs, were mainly in the 

 blue plumage, though I saw a number in the white and parti- 

 colored phases, and a female in this last condition, taken later in 

 the day, proved on dissection to be breeding, having a fully de- 

 veloped egg with hard shell in the oviduct. 



Up to the present time, though I had been away on the trip 

 for a week, not a single bird had been collected. So after dinner 

 I went to the neighborhood of the rookery, where about two 

 hundred birds in all were congregated, and in the course of the 

 afternoon I took some twenty birds of the several kinds above 

 enumerated, a pair or so of each. The rookery had evidently 

 often been disturbed before, and the birds were very shy and 

 only to be taken at long range, flying. The whole island was 

 wooded with mangrove and was perhaps half an acre in extent. 



Friday, May 7- Spent most of the morning in making the 

 birds I had killed the afternoon before into skins, and later in 

 the day explored the river further up for about four miles. This 

 search was unrewarded, and so we came back to the sloop, de- 

 termining to go out of the river and continue the exploration of 

 Charlotte Harbor in the morning. 



While anchored at this point I was visited by two plume 

 hunters, each separately, who wished to dispose of numbers of 

 plumes of Little White Egrets and other birds they had collected. 

 They seemed much surprised to find that I did not wish to buy 

 the material in question, and told me that I was the only bird 

 ma?z they had met who was not eager to obtain plumes. The 

 name of one of these men I did not ascertain, but the other was 

 Mr. Abe Wilkerson, of whom I shall have more to say later. The 

 prices they asked for plumes of Herons were about as follows : 



