5 



The Sebastian is a beautiful river ; no words of mine can adequately describe 

 it. Half a mile wide at its mouth, it narrows rapidly, and three miles above 

 appears as a mere stream which at our camp, eight miles up, was not more than 

 fifty feet in width and about fifteen in depth. Its course is exceedingly irregular 

 and winding ; the banks as we found them are high and for some distance from 

 the water densely grown with palms and cypresses which, arching, meet overhead, 

 forming most enchanting vistas, and in many places there was a wild profusion 

 of blooming convolvulus and moon-flower. Immediately back of this semi-trop- 

 ical growth appeared the pines, which extended as far as the eye could reach, 

 with occasional openings termed • prairies ', varying in extent from two or three 

 to as many hundred acres, where the trees were replaced by a species of tall grass 

 growing scantily in the shallow water which flooded these meadows. Such local- 

 ities were frequented by occasional Sand-hill Cranes, and perhaps here also 

 herons once abounded ; now the survivors have retreated to the more inaccessible 

 prairies of the interior, and we heard rumors of rookeries to be attacked by parties 

 organized expressly for the purpose. About these ' prairies ' and at the borders 

 of small streams or low ground grew in abundance a species of thistle (Cirsium 

 Lecontei, T. & G.) the seeds of which, so far as I could learn, constituted at this 

 season the entire food of Coniims. Not a patch of thistles did we find which had 

 not been visited by them, the headless stalks showing clearly where the thistles had 

 been neatly severed by the sharp chisel-like bill, while the ground beneath favorite 

 trees would be strewn with the scattered down. 



From a favorite and productive patch, late on the night of our arrival, we 

 started a flock of seven birds. Evidently their meal was finished and they were 

 ready to retire, for they darted like startled doves through the pines, twisting and 

 turning in every direction, and flying with such rapidity they were soon lost to 

 view, the ring of their sharp rolling call alone furnishing proof it was not all a 

 vision. Two days passed before I again met Conurus, and this time to better ad- 

 vantage. It was a wet and drizzling morning when we found a flock of six birds 

 feeding on thistles at the edge of a ' prairie \ Perched on the leafless branches 

 of the tree before us, their brilliant green plumage showed to the best advantage, 

 as we approached through the pines without difficulty. Several were skillfully 

 dissecting the thistles they held in their feet, biting out the milky seed while the 

 released fluffy down floated away beneath them. There was a sound of sup- 

 pressed conversation ; half articulate calls. We were only partially concealed 

 behind a neighboring tree, still they showed no great alarm at our presence ; 

 curiosity was apparently the dominant feeling. One of the three birds which fell 

 at our fire was but slightly wounded, a single shot passing through the elbow, 

 and his loud outcries soon recalled his companions, — a habit which has cost thou- 

 sands of them their lives, and in part at least accounts for the rapidity of their 

 extermination, — and one alone of this flock escaped. 



There was an evident regularity in the habits of the birds we afterwards ob- 

 served, — in all about fifty, in flocks of from six to twenty. At an early hour they 

 left their roost in the hummock bordering the river and passed out into the pines 

 to feed, always, so far as I observed, selecting thistle patches, and eating the seeds 

 only when in the milky stage. At about ten o'clock they returned to the hum- 

 mock and apparently to some favorite tree, here to pass the rest of the morning 



