198 On the trail of vanishing birds 



insisted on an early start because of the distance we had to travel 

 and the enervating heat that would be our lot after midday. 



As we moved along our jerky and yet surprisingly steady course, 



1 thought how unfortunate it is that we must serve such a long 

 apprenticeship before we are ready to finish what we set out to do 

 in this world. It had been thirty-five years since I had first hoped 

 to visit a flamingo colony, and in that time some fifteen nesting 

 sites of these beautiful birds in the Bahamas and the Caribbean 

 area had been abandoned, chiefly as a result of the rapid growth 

 of the human population in this same region. This is nearly one- 

 half of all the sites deserted since late in the seventeenth century 

 when the English navigator and sometime buccaneer William 

 Dampier visited Bonaire Island and observed the first colony of 

 nesting flamingos to be described in existing literature. However, 

 at the outset of my survey of the flamingo population for the 

 Audubon Society it was fairly clear that the largest surviving group 

 of these birds would probably be found here in the isolated back- 

 waters of Lake Rosa. There was still a lot of searching for me to 

 do after Inagua, but from all reports this island would harbor the 

 largest nursery, and on that dark and star-filled morning I felt that 

 my long search, in this one respect at least, might be near its end. 



It was growing light when we came abreast of Horse Cay, which 

 Sam wanted to look at closely, for the birds had nested there the 

 year before and were to nest there again the next year, as it hap- 

 pened. But on this occasion we neither saw nor heard any sign of 

 them. We were now nearly a quarter of the way down the lake, 

 which is about 16 miles in length, west to east as we were travel- 

 ing, and from 6 miles in width at this point to little more than 



2 miles at the far end. The entire island is some 45 miles by 18 in 

 fullest extent, so it is apparent that the lake occupies a consider- 

 able portion of the interior. 



It is a salt lake, as one would expect, since it is the home of our 

 race of Phoenicopterus, the red flamingo, a salty creature if ever 

 there was one. Like the paler race of the Mediterranean our bird 

 seems to be wedded to salt, as if unable to live away from it unless 

 it has had its great wings pinioned to prevent its certain return. 

 Long ago the lake must have been connected with the sea, prob- 



