162 HERONS, STORKS, AND IBISES 



rounded, flat plates, nearly two inches wide. When stand- 

 ing erect, it is about 16 inches high. Its body plumage is 

 either rosy pink or white, and its wing coverts and secondaries 

 are tinted a very beautiful rose-madder pink, the color being 

 most intense on the lesser coverts. 



Once quite abundant throughout the lagoons, streams and 

 swampy districts of Florida, this beautiful bird is now so 

 nearly extinct there that no live specimens have been ob- 

 tainable nearer than the Gulf coast of Mexico. Indeed, until 

 very recently there were good reasons for the belief that not 

 one Roseate Spoonbill remained alive anywhere in Florida. 

 Now, however, it is a pleasure to record the fact that this 

 species has not wholly disappeared from our avifauna. 



In The Auk for January, 1904, Mr. A. C. Bent describes 

 the finding of a few small flocks of these birds near Cape 

 Sable, which he found nesting in two localities. "The prin- 

 cipal breeding-ground of the Roseate Spoonbills was a great 

 morass on the borders of Alligator Lake, a few miles back 

 from the coast near Cape Sable, where the mangrove islands 

 in which the birds were nesting were well protected by im- 

 penetrable jungles of saw -grass, treacherous mud-holes, and ap- 

 parently bottomless creeks. . . . The Spoonbills were here 

 in abundance, and had eggs and young in their nests, in all 

 stages, as well as fully grown young climbing about in the 

 trees. The old birds were tamer than at Cuthbert Lake, and 

 allowed themselves to be photographed at a reasonable dis- 

 tance." 



"The Spoonbills," continues Mr. Bent, "will probably 

 be the next to disappear from the list of Florida water-birds. 



