14 Scott, Birds of the Gulf Coast of Florida. [January 
Of late years the birds have been so persistently persecuted in the region 
between Cape Romano and Cape Sable, and north from the former 
point to Sanibel Inlet, that they are now rare even at those points, though 
ten years ago resident there and not atall uncommon. Mr. Atkins while at 
Punta Rassa in 1885 and 1886 obtained several authentic records of the 
occurence of the Flamingo in that region. 
Some four years ago a party of ‘plume hunters,’ I am most credibly 
informed, killed in a single season, and during a single expedition after 
plumes a large number of these remarkable and beautifully colered birds. 
This was the main flock, and was well known to the spongers and other 
frequenters of the coast, in the region about Cape Romano. It seems, 
from information that I can gather, that the Flamingoes bred somewhere 
between Cape Romano and Cape Sable and south of that point quite 
recently, that is within five years, and a few may still find a nesting-ground 
on the Gulf Coast as numbers are seen every season, though the birds 
are not nearly as common as they once were and have become very shy 
from the repeated attacks upon them. 
Ajaja ajaja. RRosEATE SPOONBILL.—The record in regard to the species 
in question is even more shocking than that of the Flamingo. The 
Roseate Spoonbill was ten years ago an abundant bird on the Gulf Coast 
of Florida, as far north at least as the mouth of the Anclote River. The 
birds bred in enormous rookeries in the region about Cape Romano and 
to the south of that point. These rookeries have been described to me 
by men who helped to destroy them, as being frequently of many acres in 
extent and affording breeding ground to thousands of Roseate Spoonbills. 
The birds bred in January and were in the best plumage late in November 
and in December. They do not seem to have bred north of Charlotte 
Harbor, so far as I am able to ascertain, but immediately after the breed- 
ing season was finished, and as soon as the young were able to shift for 
themselves, there was a great dispersal of the birds tothe northward, 
particularly along the coast, though they were common at points in the 
interior. 
As late as the season of 1880 in March I found the birds in great numbers 
at all the points I visited south of the mouth of the Anclote River, and 
even north of thatZpoint they were of occasional occurrence. In Old 
Tampa Bay and at John’s Pass in March of the year in question I saw the 
birds daily and once at least two hundred alighted on a sandbar where I 
was watching some Peale’s Egrets (Ardea rufescens) and were so tame 
and unsuspicious that I approached withintwenty feet before they flew, 
and the flight was only for a short distance when they again alighted. 
All this is changed. I have spent the past four winters and two sum- 
mers in Florida. My old hunting grounds have all been carefully re- 
traversed, some of them many times, and the Roseate Spoonbill is almost 
as great a stranger to me as to my fellow workers who live the year round 
in Massachusetts. 
I have seen two near Tarpon in all the time referred to, about a dozen 
once on Old Tampa Bay, and during my trip to Charlotte Harbor in 1886 
