Vol 'l9l^ XI1 ] Kennard, The Okaloacoochee Slough. 155 



a while a group of buzzards marked the spot where one had died. 

 We heard but few Sandhill Cranes, until we neared the Okaloa- 

 coochee, when we began to see them, often two or three at a time, 

 and flushed one flock of five and then another of seven that flew off 

 "hollering" at our approach. Here also we saw our first Florida 

 Burrowing Owls, and discovered one of their burrows only a short 

 distance from where we were to camp. 



The Okaloacoochee Slough, where we proposed spending the 

 next couple of weeks, is a waterway extending from a few miles 

 south of Fort Thompson, on the Caloosahatch.ee River, in a south- 

 erly direction into the Big Cypress, and from thence to the Gulf. 

 It is bordered by a series of prairies, sloughs, marshes and swamps; 

 most of which are wet throughout the entire year; and seems to 

 be a " fly-way" for all the water birds in that part of the State that 

 do not go up the Gulf coast. 



Our first camp was near the southerly end of a large cypress 

 swamp, through which the waters of the slough took their way. 

 The prairie here is dotted with sloughs, the haunt of Sandhill 

 Cranes, the Florida Black Duck, and of countless Herons and 

 Ibises; and east of the swamp it stretches away to the horizon, 

 where the sky line is broken only by an occasional pine island, and 

 by an easterly strand of the Big Cypress, which from here can just 

 be seen. 



Here we hunted Cranes and Black Ducks, and I spent much 

 time on the prairie watching the Burrowing Owls. Peter told me 

 they were not nearly so numerous as formerly, when colonies of 

 twenty and twenty -five together were not uncommon ; and this was 

 the only location he knew of in Lee County in which these interest- 

 ing birds still bred. 



They build their nests out in the sandy soil of the open prairie, 

 on the higher places, from which the floods have receded, and which 

 here had been burned over earlier in the season. We found num- 

 bers of their little mounds scattered about, but hardly thick enough 

 to be called a colony. 



On approaching an inhabited burrow, if one or both of the 

 owners were not already in sight, they very quickly appeared; and 

 standing bolt upright on their little mound of sand at the mouth 

 of the burrow, would courtesy gravely to me, until on my nearer 



