264 
ORDERS OF BIRDS— HERONS, STORKS AND IBISES 
THE SPOONBILL FAMILY. 
Plataleidae. 
The Roseate Spoonbill , 1 or Pink “Curlew,” 
is the only member of the Spoonbill Family in 
America, and it is also the farthest from the 
type of the Order Herodiones. It is really an 
ibis with a wide bill which terminates in two 
rounded, flat plates, nearly two inches wide. 
When standing erect, it is about 16 inches high. 
Its body plumage is either rosy gray or white, 
and its wing coverts and secondaries are tinted 
a delicate and 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 obtainable 
nearer than the Omlf coast of Mexico. Indeed, 
until very recently there were good reasons for 
the belief that not one Roseate Spoonbill re- 
mained alive anywhere in Florida. Now, how- 
ever, 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 principal 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 impenetrable 
jungles of saw-grass, treacherous mud-holes, 
and apparently 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 Cuth- 
bert Lake, and allowed themselves to be photo- 
graphed at a reasonable distance. 
1 A-ja'i-a a-ja'i-a. 
“The Spoonbills,” continues Mr. Bent, “will 
probably be the next to disappear from the list 
of Florida water-birds. They are already much 
reduced in numbers and restricted in habitat. 
They are naturally shy and their rookeries are 
easily broken up. Their plumage makes them 
attractive marks for the tourist’s gun, and they 
are killed by the natives for food. But fortu- 
nately their breeding-places are remote, and 
almost inaccessible; and through the earnest 
efforts of the A. O. U. wardens they are now 
protected. It is to be hoped that adequate 
protection in the future will result in the 
preservation of this unique and interesting 
species.” 
The nests found by Mr. Bent on Cuthbert 
Lake, almost on the edge of the Everglades, 
were built in red mangrove-trees on the edge of 
the water, all on nearly horizontal branches, 
from 12 to 15 feet from the ground. “They 
were well made, of large sticks, deeply hollowed, 
and lined with strips of bark and water-moss. 
One nest contained only a single, heavily in- 
cubated egg, one a handsome set of three eggs, 
and the other held two downy young, not quite 
half grown.” 
In my opinion, there is no “cause,” either 
existent or creatable, not even the “cause of 
science,” which could justify the killing or capt- 
ure of any of the birds composing those last 
small flocks of Spoonbills. Not even the ne- 
cessities of a zoological garden should for one 
moment be accepted as an excuse for meddling 
with that avian remnant; and let no hunter 
think of offering a bargain in live Spoonbills 
frdm Cape Sable, or of now writing to ask “ What 
will you give?” 
It is to be hoped that the people of Florida 
will see to it that the Spoonbill is absolutely 
protected for the next twenty years, with the 
same intelligent interest and humane reason 
that has saved the manatee down to 1903. 
