SO FLORIDA BIRD-LIFE 



(Euetheia), Honey Creeper (Certhiola), Ani (Crotophaga), 

 are unknown or accidental in Florida, though they are com- 

 mon on the Biminis as well as Great Bahama fifty miles 

 farther north. 



A combination of climatic conditions and peninsular iso- 

 lation acting, for the most part, on permanently resident 

 species, has resulted in the development, in Florida, of some 

 twenty-three more or less well marked geographical races 

 or species of birds in the making. Some of these extend 

 northward, up the Lower Austral Coast strip to South Car- 

 olina and westward to Louisiana, while others are confined 

 to the southern half of the state. As a rule, they are smaller 

 in size and darker in color than their more northern repre- 

 sentatives. 



Florida, however, is not only making new species but it 

 has preserved old ones. The Sandhill Crane, now extinct as 

 a breeding bird in most of the northern states where it was 

 formerly common, is still abundant in certain parts of south 

 central Florida; the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is now found, 

 outside of Florida, only in Louisiana; the Carolina Paro 

 quet, once numerous in all the eastern states south of Vir- 

 ginia, is now found only in Florida, and the last United 

 States individuals of the Snowy Egret, Reddish Egret, and 

 Roseate Spoonbill will doubtless be found in Florida. 



Probably it is to this state's preserving influences, act- 

 ing over a much longer period, that we may attribute the 

 presence there of birds with such close western affiliations 

 as the Burrowing Owl and Florida Jay ; both of which so 

 closely resemble their representatives in our western states 

 as to be considered essentially similar to them. Probably 

 the wide area intervening between the range of the Florida 

 and western species was, where favorable, at one time occu- 

 pied by both Jays and Owls ; but whatever the reason for 

 their extinction there, whether the cold of a Glacial Period ov 

 some more recent agent, it apparently was not active in Flor- 

 ida, which, beyond question, must have been the retreat for 



