Carolina Parakeet in Carolinas 93 



which is not quite the case, since the dams and reservoirs are con- 

 siderably upstream from the area in question. 



In discounting the discounters, Laycock convinced himself that there 

 was some fire amidst all the smoke of the decade of the 1930s. Through 

 the kindness of Les Line, editor of Audubon, I have read the very con- 

 siderable amount of smoke generated in those faraway times. In the 

 following review, I plan to quote from the Audubon Society archives only 

 when some commentary upon the earlier published record or the good ac- 

 count by Laycock seems called for. Any apparent brusqueness is in the 

 interest of brevity. The decision is still open and I leave the reader to his 

 instincts. 



George Melamphy, dismissed acidly by world famous ornithologist 

 Ludlow Griscom as "not a bird student," did have some knowledge of 

 wild turkeys and I can see no particular reason for him to mislead any- 

 one in regard to other birds. Besides, he did apparently correctly alert 

 Sprunt and others to the presence of ivory-billed woodpeckers. The 

 preliminary report by Sprunt on 10 April 1935, relating definite but un- 

 dated Melamphy sightings, described the region in question, some 25 

 miles above the delta of the Santee River, as "a tract of unbroken wilder- 

 ness and absolutely virgin timber." His enthusiasm was probably justi- 

 fied, but Audubon official Lester L. Walsh on 24 December 1937 (after 

 the chilling Griscom episode, to be recounted shortly) was more re- 

 strained in his analysis: "Lest any misapprehension exist relative to the 

 extent of virgin timber let me say that most of the cypress and gum in the 

 region gives indications of having been cut at one time or another." There 

 were, however, unlumbered patches of small extent and some places 

 judged adequate habitat for parakeets. 



A "Cracker" (Sprunt's term) named W. F. "Red" Welch, who took on 

 the very part-time job of warden for a section of the Santee tract over 

 which the Audubon Society was able to gain slight control, also reported 

 seeing a parakeet, but he may have been shoring up his job. He sub- 

 mitted a couple of feathers which looked interesting enough to Allen that 

 he sent them to Alexander Wetmore of the U. S. National Museum for 

 identification. Wetmore reported them to be meadowlark feathers. 



Another local man, Warren J. Shokes (described as a man of "simple 

 honesty" by Sprunt but who struck Griscom as "quite capable of bare 

 fabrication") became official warden on 1 February 1936. He reported 

 seeing a parakeet, with adult coloring, on 17 February. By the end of 

 December he had reported five sightings of the parakeet, and on 

 Christmas Day his son, Hollie, saw what Sprunt recorded as "a beautiful 

 adult Carolina Paroquet." Hollie thought the bird had a rather darker 

 band around the base of the neck than was shown in the picture given 



