A CYPRESS SWAMP. 49 



Here and there the land rises a little above the level of the 

 water into green mounds called " hummocks," where grow scat- 

 tered palmettoes, waving their palm-like crests above the sur- 

 rounding trees. Here the great ivory-billed woodpecker, the 

 largest and most beautiful of his race, may perhaps be heard 

 knocking with his great white beak to rout out the palmetto- 

 borer. In the fringe of buttonwood, and pther brush about 

 the edges of the hummocks, herons breed, or did breed before 

 they were so nearly exterminated for millinery. There was a 

 time when hundreds and thousands of them the great blue 

 Ward's heron, nearly like our largest heron of the North, the 

 medium-sized reddish egret, the little blue heron, and the 

 little white egret, with the whole tribe of night herons 



used to be here in countless numbers, building their 

 loose platforms of sticks among the branches, and keeping 

 their awkward guard over the beautiful blue-green eggs and 

 squabby young. What a clamor rose ! What a smell of de- 

 cayed fish from the fragments dropped beneath the nests ! A 

 few remnants of the former host remain still and breed in the 

 bushes. The fish-crows lurk about picking up the leavings on 

 the ground, or stealing an egg or a young heron from the nest 

 when they can. The boat-tailed grackle, the "jackdaw " of 

 the South, croaks in the willows, and a Florida white- 

 breasted nuthatch, inspecting the larger trees, threads his way 

 up and down, indifferent which end of him is uppermost. It 

 may be that a flock of white ibises, distinguished from, the 

 white herons by their black wing-tips and outstretched necks, 

 a roseate spoon-bill, the "pink curlew" of the South, a 

 great bald-headed wood ibis, locally known as a " gannet," 



or a hoarse-voiced brown crane will pass by where they 

 can be seen through the tree-tops. 



And off in the distance, low down among the water-plants 



