222 



Scott on the Bird Rookeries of Southern Florida. 



mostly of the Snowy Heron. He told me that the Mexican Buz- 

 zard, as he c.dled it, was common in the region where he had 

 been and showed me a skin of one that he had killed. The bird 

 was Polyborus cheriway, and it breeds in this area, at least such 

 is my conjecture from birds of the year that have been sent to me 

 from the vicinity of the headwaters of the Myakka River. 



Wanting" a good pilot and a man conversant with the country 

 I hired Mr. Wilkerson to make the trip with me back to Tarpon 

 Springs, and besides the work he did I gained much valuable 

 information concerning the condition of the breeding grounds 

 further south, and the decrease in birds during the past tew 

 years. Without going into too great details, it was substantially 

 the same as the facts gathered from Frank Johnson, Mr. Atkins, 

 and others, and is a story of almost a war of extermination. 



To-day we passed a large rookery known as the Boca Grande 

 Rookery, and here I saw a few 'Pink Curlews,' as the 'plumers' 

 call Ajaja ajaja, but as there was a constant discharge of gnus, 

 and as the war seemed to be going on without any appearance of 

 ceasing, we passed on without stopping. The principal birds 

 seemed to be Man-o'-war Birds and Brown Pelicans, and though 

 there were large numbers of each, Captain Baker said that when 

 he was fishing for a season at this point a few years before, there 

 were hundreds of birds of all kinds at this rookery where there 

 was one now. 



We kept on our course north and, sailing up along the east 

 coast of Pine Island, crossed over the mouth of Charlotte Harbor 

 and anchored for the night at a deserted fishing station just south 

 of Big Gasparilla Pass. It was quite dark when we anchored 

 here, so I saw no birds. But during the afternoon and until dark 

 large flocks — hundreds — of Gulls, which I thought were mostly 

 Larits atricilla, passed close to the water, not fishing but evi- 

 dently migrating northward. Many of these birds were in im- 

 mature plumage, and I shall have occasion to refer to them again 

 later in connection with other species observed. 



( To be continued.) 



