294 The Roseate Spoonbill 



the northern part of the continents, Spoonbills, with other birds, were 

 forced southward into the warmer parts of both the Old World and 

 the American continent. In that way the Spoonbill family, which previ- 

 ously had dwelt together all around the borders of the Polar Sea, became 

 separated into groups, each of which, in its new home, developed specific 

 differences. 



Of the six species now known America received but one, the Roseate 



Spoonbill, whose peculiar scientific title (Ajaia a;a;a) is based on the 



name given it by certain South American Indians. 



Names When naturalists first knew this bird it was found 



throughout tropical America north to our Gulf States 



from Texas to Florida. In the United States it is now confined mainly 



to southern Florida. 



Although I first went to Florida in 1887, it was not until 1908 that 

 I saw Spoonbills there. Doubtless always more common on the coast 

 than in the interior, the few survivors were then to be found only in the 

 most remote part of the great mangrove swamps south of the Everglades. 

 On the evening of March 29, 1908, after traveling all day through mud 

 and mangroves, we reached the Cuthbert rookery, near the extreme 

 southern part of the peninsula, and saw, to our intense satisfaction, that 

 among the thousands of Herons nesting on it were about forty Spoonbills. 



The beautiful peach-bloom-like pink of the Spoonbills is noticeable 

 at a great distance. In manner of flight they resemble Ibises rather than 

 Herons, the neck being held fully extended. The flock formation is also 

 like that sometimes assumed by the Ibis, each bird flying behind, but a 

 little to one side of the bird before it, making a diagonal file. Spoonbills, 

 however, so far as I have observed, maintain a steady flapping of the 

 wings, not interrupted by short sailings, as in the case of the Ibis. 



The Spoonbill's peculiarly shaped beak is adapted to an equally 

 peculiar method of procuring food. I have never been close to one of 

 these birds when feeding in its native haunts, but Audubon tells us that 

 they "wade up to the tibia [shank] and immerse their 

 Feeding bills in the water or soft mud, sometimes with the 

 head and even whole neck beneath the surface. They 

 move their partially opened mandibles laterally to and fro with a con- 

 siderable degree of elegance, munching the fry, insects, or small fish 

 which they secure before swallowing them." 



Audubon says nothing of the voice of the Spoonbill. At the Cuth- 

 bert rookery I heard no notes I could identify as their's, but two years 

 later, in Mexico, I heard them utter a low, croaking call at their nests. 

 T. Gilbert Pearson, who once watched a flock of them feeding at close 

 quarters, says that this grunting sound was continuous, as if the birds 

 kept up a kind of conversation among themselves. 



Fear in animals is so often born of pursuit by man that it is fre- 

 quently difficult to say whether birds that have been much hunted are shy 

 instinctively or intelligently. Wild Ducks, we know, are as wary as birds 



