T 4 
Scott on Birds observed in Florida. 
ON BIRDS OBSERVED IN SUMPTER, LEVY, AND 
HILLSBORO’ COUNTIES, FLORIDA. 
BY W. E. D. SCOTT. 
My purpose in the following pages is to give additional notes 
on the distribution and habits of certain birds that do not seem to 
have come commonly under the notice of ornithologists collecting 
in Florida during the fall, winter, and early spring months. The 
data which follow were collected during two visits to Florida, 
and at the several points to be presently indicated. The first of 
these visits occuiTed in 1876 and covered a period extending from 
January 1 to the end of the following March. The observations 
then made were confined to the interior, the precise location 
being at Panasofkee Lake in Sumpter County. Here a large 
region was carefully studied and particularly the bird fauna of 
this lake, — a small body' of water, about eight miles long and 
four broad in its widest part. Its greatest depth is, so far as ascer- 
tained, about fifteen feet, but the general depth is much less, 
being not more than three or four feet. The general character- 
istics of the region are those common to many parts of the State, 
— rolling sandhills wooded with pine, “hummocks,” some of great 
extent, and wet open grass lands or marshes. These last give 
rise to certain small streams supplying the lake, which in its turn 
has a large outlet leading into the Withlacoochee River, forming 
one of the main branches of that river. The lake is bounded by 
“saw-grasses” and cypress swamps; the latter are very exten- 
sive about the outlet of the lake and along the river above-men- 
tioned. 
Late in October, 1879, I again visited Florida, and spent from 
November 1 until April ‘5‘ on the Gulf Coast. The interval from 
the 1 st of November until the 25th of January was passed at a 
point some three miles north of the mouth of the Withlacoochee 
River. Here the Gulf is dotted’ for a distance of three or four 
miles from the shore with innumerable islands, mostly low and of 
very limited area. The main land, as it approaches the Gulf, is 
heavily wooded with pine, interspersed here and there with small 
hummocks. The pine forests end generally very abruptly in large 
salt marshes reaching to the Gulf. 
