202 On the trail of vanishing birds 



roar. Now it seemed high-pitched and toneless, the sort of sound 

 that can only be made by the dissonant unison of thousands of 

 voices. Still, we could see nothing, except the now more frequent 

 and more lengthy strings of flying birds, their long slender necks 

 stretching out in front and their equally long and slender legs 

 out behind, so that each bird seemed like an animated spear 

 hurtling through the air. When they passed close to us these 

 swiftly moving lines honked much like flocks of geese, but we 

 scarcely heard them against the growing volume of sound in the 

 background. 



We reached Long Cay, passed quickly through the shade of its 

 buttonwoods, where the fulsome scent of wild jackasses lay heavily 

 on the air, and emerged into the sun and wind on its eastern face. 

 The breeze was from its accustomed easterly quarter and now 

 that Long Cay lay behind us, that is, to the west, the sound of the 

 flamingo multitudes on ahead was suddenly louder. We hastened 

 on, greatly encouraged and in a rage of excitement, until at length 

 we came close up against another barrier of low trees. As we drew 

 near to them Sam all at once grabbed me by the arm with one 

 hand and with the other pointed off toward a break in the vege- 

 tation about a half mile farther on. Openmouthed, we stood and 

 stared in silence. Through the thin screen of brush we could see a 

 solid band of red. It shimmered and undulated in the heat exactly 

 as if it were a long sheet of flame. I thought at once of Frank 

 Chapman's classic account of a similar view of these birds, a half 

 century before on Andros Island. "It was an appalling sight," he 

 wrote. "One of the boatmen said it looked 'like hell,' and the de- 

 scription is apt enough to be set down without impropriety." 



Knowing only that this moving mass of red must be a great 

 assemblage of flamingos, we walked rapidly ahead until we had 

 reached the shelter of a narrow growth of low trees. There we 

 flopped on our bellies and stared out across the large pond wherein 

 the flock was congregated. I guessed that there were well over 

 1,000 flamingos in the group, but they were packed so closely 

 together literally shoulder to shoulder that it was difficult to 

 judge. There might easily have been more than twice that num- 

 ber. They moved this way and that, without obvious purpose, 



