196 On the trail of vanishing birds 



Then I saw the nets. They were old fishing nets stretched be- 

 tween bare tree trunks or poles shoved into the soft mud. In one, 

 scarcely recognizable, was what remained of the body of a young, 

 half-grown flamingo. These nets, the boys readily explained, were 

 used to capture the young birds before they were large enough to 

 fly. Oh yes, they had helped in this capture. Each year the fla- 

 mingos nested here and each year, when the young were the right 

 size, the nets were spread and several hundred birds driven into 

 them and caught. Some alive, some dead, all to be sold or eaten. 

 Not many four hundred, five hundred perhaps. A good haul was 

 made last year. Strange that none had nested this season. It was 

 mid-May and ordinarily they should have hatched most of their 

 chicks by now. What could have happened? 



I thought I knew what had happened. There had been one 

 raid too many. I had found my Cuban flamingo colony one year 

 too late! 



Would the birds return to this unlucky site? Would the deeply 

 etched influence of their long-established behavior patterns over- 

 come, once more, the panic, the death, the fear, and the frustra- 

 tion these repeated raids must have occasioned? I sat dejectedly 

 on an abandoned nest mound a beautiful mound of black mud 

 set with purple Venus Vshells that glistened hopefully in the 

 bright sun and I pondered this imponderable equation. My dis- 

 appointed friends stood awkwardly in the mud, fingering the 

 torn nets and sharing my distress, even if they did not fully under- 

 stand it. At any rate, I thought, we now know where the flamingos 

 will build their nests on the Cuban coast, if permitted to do so and 

 if allowed to rear their young in peace. Perhaps, with this knowl- 

 edge as a new starting point, something can be done to provide 

 these lovely and harassed creatures with the protection and se- 

 curity they need so desperately. 



"It's too bad," I told my friends, "that the flamingos can't stage 

 their own revolution." 



