22 2 Scott on Flamingoes near Cape Sable, Florida. \ July 



point, five in all. These rookeries were inhabited by compara- 

 tively small numbers of Brown Pelicans, Florida Cormorants, 

 and White Ibises, — nothing else. 



Eighteen miles east of Cape Sable are three bays making into 

 the mainland. The water in these bays and for miles outside of 

 them is extremely shallow, being rarely more than eighteen inches 

 in depth, while the average depth on ordinary tides probably does 

 not exceed six inches. The bottom is soft and muddy, and the 

 irud is very deep, making wading, for a man, impossible. The 

 shores are wooded with black mangrove, ' button wood,' and some 

 cabbage palmettoes, and there is much undergrowth of smaller 

 shrubs. The land is so low as to be flooded at any extra high 

 tide. The country is necessarily very damp, and is the home of 

 the mosquito in all its varieties. Even in February, when I 

 visited the region, though a stiff easterly breeze was blowing 

 all the time, going ashore was something to be dreaded, and 

 once on the land the conditions were wellnigh unbearable. It 

 was a most desolate and forbidding region either on sea, if sea it 

 may be called, or on the land. 



I had heard much of this flock of Flamingoes, and taking a 

 supply of fresh water, enough to last for a week, the schooner, or 

 more properly 'sharpie,' was turned in the direction of the locality 

 I had been led to believe the birds frequented. After rounding 

 Cape Sable we were able to cruise in tiie sharpie, which only 

 draws about eighteen inches of water, to a point some seven 

 or eight miles east of the Cape and about two miles from the 

 mainland. Here all semblance of a navigable channel ceased, and 

 here I was obliged to make my headquarters. In the vicinity 

 were a few scattered keys wooded with mangrove, all of 

 them affording breeding places and homes for Ardea occi- 

 dentalis. This beautiful and conspicuous species was not at all 

 uncommon, but seemed there to be of a solitary disposition, 

 in no way resembling its allies, all of which seem more or less 

 gregarious, especially in the breeding season. An examination of 

 the keys rarely showed the existence of more than two nests on 

 an island, and the birds were so wary as to be almost impossible 

 to approach, even when nesting. The breeding season, I should 

 say, 'was fairly begun, if not at its height, and in one nest I found 

 two downy young, one of which was apparently a day or two old, 

 and the other just hatched from the egg and not yet dry. There 



