1889
Feb. 19
Banana River, Florida.
Cloudy and cool. Wind N.E. blowing a gale all day. Heavy rain
in forenoon.
  Breakfast at seven o'clock. Shortly after, keeper
of the relief stations, Quartermain by name, came on board
and offered to guide us to a creek where there was good
duck shooting. His first exploit was to run the "Manatu"
hard and fast aground in attempting to cross a mud
bar. Several hours were spent in attempting to warp her off.
Failing in this we left her and started off in the small
boats. The wind was blowing a gale and we drove down
before it into a creek at the mouth of which  I left C[ory]
to shoot over the decoys while I went on with
Quartermain to visit some ponds. We saw a great
many Ducks, chiefly Scaups & Ring-necks, on the way
down and some large flocks rose from the creek which
Coots (Felica) were lying in beds of acres everywhere.
But the trip to the ponds proved a failure , for there
'were no birds in them. Five Florida Dusky Ducks, however,
scaled down past us and alighted on a flooded
meadow. I tried to stall them but in vain. They
rose precisely like our Black Duck and the flight was
the same but their coloring looked as light as that
of [female] Mallards.
  I saw on this tramp over five Ardea egretta, several
A. ludoviciana, numerous Savannah Sparrows. I also
started seven or eight Snipe & Nelly made two fine
points on them. I shot three times at them with #4 & killed one. On the way back to the boat saw
a Duck Hawk scaling over the meadows. During the
entire time it was raining in torrents with the
wind blowing in fierce gusts so that it was hard to see.