19 The spoonbill comes into its own 



challenging of North American habitats. Gaze at a mangrove key 

 from the deck of a boat. It is drab or wild-appearing or uninter- 

 esting or even unnoticed, depending on your individual point of 

 view. But go ashore, alone. Above all, camp there overnight. It is 

 no longer drab or uninteresting, and certainly not unnoticed. And 

 as for its being wild, you will revise your private connotation of 

 that word before the night is over. A million years have done 

 little to change the aspect of a hidden pool inside the mangrove. 

 If you don't believe it, crawl with crocodile and terrapin through 

 the slime and watch the lowly gastropod leave his smooth track 

 beside yours. A million years have not changed them. Best of all, 

 stay out there at night. You will listen to the silence of centuries 

 and you will hear, as I have, the noiseless murmur of the Pleisto- 

 cene. 



At 6 P.M. the Croc was hard aground on the mud flat where the 

 falling tide had left her. She was probably there for the night, and 

 I along with her, although I figured there might be enough water 

 to get her off around midnight if I could manage to wake up. 

 Then I could run her slowly out into the middle of the lake and 

 anchor until daylight. There was a freshening wind out of the west, 

 and after dark it started to rain. 



It was April, 1941, the second spring of my spoonbill studies, 

 and I was stuck in the mouth of Little Sable Creek at the north- 

 ern end of Lake Ingraham, but anxious to leave so as to move on 

 up the coast toward Alligator Cove, where I knew I would find 

 spoonbills. As it turned out, I got up five times during the night 

 but was unable to get clear. Next morning there were three white 

 pelicans loafing on a mudbank in the lake, watching me with 

 disinterest. As I made my coffee I counted sixteen willets feeding 

 in the shallows nearby and bathing in the nearly fresh flow of 

 water. Overhead flashed scattered flocks of shore birds and small 

 groups of lesser scaups. I had seen no spoonbills. To pass the time 

 I took the small skiff and poled up the creek, with snowy egrets 

 rising ahead of me. Turning into the ditch leading to Cattail 

 Lakes, I soon reached the sawgrass. Along the bank a clump of 

 yucca was in full bloom, their white flowers lovely in that desert- 



