154 Kennard, The Okaloacoochee Slough. [April 



THE OKALOACOOCHEE SLOUGH. 1 



BY FREDERIC H. KENNARD. 



Plates XIII-XV. 



We camped on the nights of March 13 and 14, 1914, about three 

 miles north of the "main strand" of the Big Cypress, close beside 

 the trail, in an open glade among the cypress heads; and both 

 nights the wind blew so that I was glad to crawl into the lee of a 

 neighboring tree. 



Here we hunted turkeys, obtaining some of both sexes, and 

 collecting several Swallow-tailed Kites, whose nesting season was 

 just beginning, and which I think are, with the exception of the 

 Roseate Spoonbill, the most beautiful birds I have ever shot. 



On the 15th we traveled north, along the Immokalee trail for 

 about eight miles, and then struck out across the prairie, skirting 

 the edge of the cypress swamp and pine woods in a northeasterly 

 direction for about seven miles, until we came to a little pine island 

 near the edge of the Okaloacoochee Slough, where we camped for 

 several days. 



During the trip I discovered a Swallow-tailed Kite building its nest 

 in the top of a tall, slim pine, near the edge of some pine woods, 

 and close by a cypress swamp. The nest was about sixty-five feet 

 up, and instead of being built against the trunk of the tree, as is so 

 often the case with raptores, was built at the end of an upreaching 

 limb, and from the ground, looked like a rather flimsy structure of 

 sticks, to which the old bird was now adding moss. In shooting 

 this bird I broke his right wing at the pinion joint, and he continued 

 to fly screaming above my head, with the pinion flapping, until I 

 brought him down with another shot. Their powers of flight are 

 certainly marvellous. 



En route we saw numbers of cattle, poor scrawny beasts, scat- 

 tered about the prairie, most of them pretty wild, and every once in 



1 Cf. Auk, Jan., 1915, p. 1, for details of this expedition through southern 

 Florida. 



