VoL ™] Williams, Birds of Goose Creek, Fla. 49 



great preponderance of Mallards and Pintails. The quacking of 

 the former was heard at all times of day as they fed, out of gun 

 range, in the Creek, or rested in the open water out in front of the 

 main shore. One afternoon, at low tide, we discovered a large 

 flock of Mallards and Pintails, with a few individuals of other 

 species, feeding on a mud flat in the Creek, but they took wing 

 before we could arrive within gun range. 



Great Blue Herons were fairly numerous all along the shores at 

 both high and low tide. Least and Red-backed Sandpipers were 

 not uncommon and fed together in small flocks along the beach 

 and on the mud flats and oyster beds. Ospreys and Marsh Hawks 

 were constantly beating to and fro, the former over the waters 

 and the latter over the marshes and prairies. Like George Caven- 

 dish Taylor (Ibis, IV, 135), I observed that the Ospreys while 

 flying with fish in their talons invariably hold them in a position 

 parallel with the birds' bodies and with the fish's head always fore- 

 most. 



I was delighted one day to see two Snowy Egrets feeding at a 

 small, isolated pond, situated on the edge of one of the prairies 

 and at the commencement of a rather heavily timbered area. Not 

 only the woods and prairies, but also the salt marshes, oyster beds, 

 mud flats, and shores were infested by "razor-backs," — a local 

 name for the semi-wild hogs that roam at large in many portions 

 of Florida. They are essentially omnivorous and I can well 

 imagine that the ground-nesting species of birds in that region have 

 somewhat of a struggle to perpetuate their kind. My observa- 

 tions of the birds at East Goose Creek were conducted without 

 special or systematic effort, as I had gone there primarily for other 

 purposes. Nevertheless, I recorded ninety species during my 

 brief visit, a list of which concludes this paper. 



Goose Creek has already made its debut in ornithological 

 literature. Lieut. Ludlow Griscom published a nominal list of 95 

 species seen there by him in December, 1915. (Sixteenth Christ- 

 mas Bird Census, Bird-Lore, XVIII, 31). Of these, 85 were seen 

 on the 29th and 10 on two other days. His estimate of the total 

 number of individuals of the 85 species seen on the 29th was 7,085. 

 In his list are 21 species which I did not see, namely, Pied-billed 

 Grebe, Loon, Laughing Gull, Royal Tern, Florida Cormorant, 



