25 The spoonbill comes into its own 



themselves but were discarded, one by one, as impractical. With 

 a species as rare as Ajaia ajaja it would be impossible to even so 

 much as lay a hand on a single one of them. How was it to be 

 done? 



There was also the less immediate but equally important ques- 

 tion of the origin of these flocks. Where did they come from? 

 With our Texas spoonbills quite obviously migrating in an op- 

 posite direction toward Mexico and our little Florida Bay colony 

 producing only a handful of young each year, it seemed clear that 

 these particular individuals must be hatched and reared in colo- 

 nies outside our boundaries. But where? 



Actually it wasn't as difficult as you might imagine, and I never 

 have had so much fun in my life as I did in working it out. I 

 eventually decided that there was only one way to acquaint myself 

 with the age groups in the summer flocks, and that was to seek 

 them out, observe them at close hand, and analyze their plumages 

 in as much detail as I could. Fortunately for my purpose, the flock 

 as a whole was broken up into many small units, beginning with 

 the southernmost unit in the vicinity of the East Cape Canal in 

 back of Cape Sable. There were other small flocks near Wood 

 Key, Alligator Cove, Shark Bight, Duck Rock and Duck Rock 

 Cove, Joe's Grasses, Rabbit Key Grasses, Pink Curlew Flats, 

 Bluehill Bay, and still farther north in Pine Sound. In other 

 words, if I could spend enough time with each separate unit to 

 observe the plumages represented, then by the end of the summer 

 I might learn what we needed to know. 



This inquiry was the chief purpose of the cruise of the Croc, 

 the shallow-draft, eighteen-foot boat that I fitted out just for this 

 job. I could live aboard her for ten days at a stretch without setting 

 foot on shore, if need be, and in her I could reach every one of the 

 remote coves and the half-hidden bays where the spoonbills came 

 in to feed. I let the tide drop me on mud flats close to where I 

 conjectured the pink birds would appear, and by trial and error 

 I finally managed to work over the entire route and fill my note- 

 books with detailed descriptions and sketches of a total of 305 

 spoonbills, or nearly 60 per cent of the entire summering flock. On 

 a basis of their plumages, none were juveniles, 109 were birds 



