A REDDISH EGRET, NOT 

 A BIRD PARADISE 



If we had suddenly opened the door of 

 an overcrowded hen-house and thrown a 

 bomb within, the change could not have 

 been greater or the effect more surpris- 

 ing. Hundreds of birds which had been 

 quietly resting at mid-day, with squawks 

 of alarm, sprang into the air, and for a 

 moment we were dazed by the confusion 

 about us. But among the numberless 

 herons of several species we could see 

 dozens of delicately colored pink forms, 

 while in nearly every tree was one or 

 more nests holding young nearly as large 

 and as pink as the parents which had just 

 left them. We had at last reached the 

 home of the spoonbill (see pp. 548-550). 



Further exploration revealed a surpris- 

 ing number of birds on the island. There 

 were Louisiana and little blue herons in 

 great abundance, a few reddish and 

 American egrets, black-crowned and little 

 green herons, wood ibis and black-necked 

 stilts, snowy banks of white ibis, and 

 probably 200 pairs of roseate spoonbills. 

 Nearly all were nesting, and it was ob- 



Photo by Frank M, Chapman 



PHOTOGRAPHED BEEORE 



vious that we had before us an unusual 

 opportunity to record photographically, 

 both with motion film and fixed plate 

 cameras, the appearance and habits of 

 some little-known birds. 



We first directed our attention toward 

 the spoonbills, the most difficult, as well 

 as the most valuable, subjects before us. 

 Satisfactory studies could not be made 

 from below, and the trees were generally 

 too small to furnish support at the de- 

 sired height, and before a proper location 

 was found and the umbrella blind and 

 cinematograph placed in position our 

 strength, if not patience, was fully spent. 



SACRIFICED TO FASHION 



The odor from the decaying bodies of 

 white egrets which, stripped of their 

 plumes by hunters, had been thrown into 

 the semi-liquid mud of the rookery, of 

 their dead young in the nests above and 

 water below, of the fragments of food 

 and sundry debris of a great gathering of 

 birds, the extreme heat- — the mercury 

 reached 99 0 — and the abundance of mos- 



544 



