308 
FOREST AND STREAM 
you have brought along, makes the dinner hour 
the most pleasant one of the day. Several times 
I have extended my fishing trips along the 
Sebastian to several days, camping at night on 
the banks of the stream and sitting around the 
camp fire in the evening discuss the events of 
the day and plan how you will “yank ’em out’’ 
on the morrow. “It would be well, perhaps, if 
we were to spend more of our days and nights 
without any obstruction between us and the 
celestial bodies,” to drink in the tonic of the 
wilderness, to worship in the groves, God’s first 
temples, to breathe ozone of the resinous pine, 
to listen to the murmur of the stream and the 
cries of the night birds. 
“You heah dat owl a-hootin 
Laik Gabrul’s horn a-tootin 
‘Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-ah, hoo’! 
A-cacklin an a-Iaughin. 
Jes’ laik er niggah chaffin’ 
’Bout the las’ great Jedgemen’ Day? 
‘Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-ah, hoo’ ” ! 
There is one particularly hard bit of river to 
fish where one earns every fish he takes. The 
banks are muddy and a perfect tangle of trees 
and vines but many bass lurk in the dark waters 
and if you are persevering you will get some of 
them, even if it does cost you a few lines and 
hooks, net to speak of severe scratches on your 
hands and face from thorns and bushes. You 
can only take a few from one place, however, 
when they get wise and you have to move on. 
There are times when the catfish and gars 
are a nuisance and what is most exasperating 
you seldom hook a gar as their mouths are 
hard and the hook slides from it as from iron 
but they do not mind being jerked clear of the 
water and will attack your second minnow as 
readily as the first. The gar is good for noth¬ 
ing except to furnish a target for the spear 
thrower. 
The blue bream is another fish which fur¬ 
nishes excellent sport and is also a good table 
fish. It rises freely to artificial flies and takes 
frogs or cut bait readily. They collect in schools 
in the deep holes early in the season and large 
catches may be obtained from one of these 
places. 
The warmouth perch is a welcome fish for 
the angler but is not as game as the bass; how¬ 
ever he is a good table fish and furnishes sport 
in coaxing him out from his retreat among the 
cypress roots. 
This narrative, like the stream it wishes to 
tell about, has many windings and turnings, also 
it has an ending and this point it has now reached. 
_ 1 X 1 HE LOUISIANA LOWLANDS—Fred Mather. 
Sketches of life in the Canebrake, plantation life, fish¬ 
ing and camping and hunting, queer characters in a 
primitive country just after the Civil War. Full of 
quaint humor and delightful description. Cloth, illus. 
Postpaid, $i.oo. 
CANVAS CANOES AND HOW TO BUILD 
THEM—Parker B. Field. The book gives very precise 
instructions by which a man with ordinary mechanical 
bent may build a serviceable canoe at slight cost— 
a plan and all working directions. Paper. Postpaid 
50 cents. 
GAS ENGINES AND LAUNCHES—Francis K. 
Grain. A few pages are devoted to launches in gen¬ 
eral, with some excellent advice to the prospective 
owner of a motor boat, but the author’s attention is 
given chiefly to explaining the principles, working and 
practical handling of the marine motor for the ama¬ 
teur who does not care to trouble his head with in¬ 
volved. technical information. Cloth, illus., 123 pages. 
Postpaid, $1.25. 
How Birds Are Increasing In Florida 
Interesting Report Showing What Intelligent Protection and Conservation 
Will Do 
By F. M. 
N the spring of 1913 I had the good fortune 
to be in Florida during the months of March 
and April and the early part of May. Of 
this time the latter half of March and nearly all 
of April were spent in the Big Cypress Swamp 
region of Lee county in the southwestern part of 
the state, and it is relative to its resident bird 
life that this paper has to deal, giving particular 
attention to the larger and more important spe¬ 
cies. 
F.arly in the afternon we arrived at Mr. Green’s 
camp beside one of the finest rookeries to be 
found in Florida, an imposing one even in these 
days of diminishing bird life. Here is no doubt 
the largest nesting colony of wood ibis in the 
state, probably not less than 5,000 pairs of birds. 
Perhaps 300 American egrets were nesting here, 
and a little handful, not more than a dozen pairs, 
of the beautiful roseate spoonbill, which I saw 
here for the first time in life, a memory that 
still recurs to me. That evening as we stood 
watching the birds filing in from the feeding 
grounds and circling over the rookery, I caught 
a gleam of pink as one of the more distant birds 
turned in the rays of the setting sun, and level¬ 
ing my glass I watched my first “pink curlew” 
circle slowly two or three times above the tree- 
tops and then drop down to its nest. 
Next morning as the first light of dawn tinged 
the eastern sky a pair of sandhill cranes began 
whooping on a little pond scarcely a quarter of 
a mile away, an old turkey gobbler struck up his 
mating call down the open glade that lay be¬ 
tween us and the cypress swamp, the thousands 
of young wood ibis and other nestlings set up 
their insistent clamor for food, which did not 
hush nor diminish until the sun was high in the 
heavens, and then I realized that here was nature 
at first hand and that opportunities awaited me 
that do not come to every ornithologist. 
I passed several very pleasant and profitable 
days with Green, and perhaps a few words in 
description of this splendid rookery, known as the 
Corkscrew among the plume hunters of South 
Florida, will not be amiss. In form it is a great 
ellipse of cypress swamp enclosing an open tree¬ 
less area some three miles long and a mile or 
more in width, covered with saw grass and other 
swamp grasses. The encircling band of cypress 
varies in width from about one-third of a mile at 
the narrow point on the east to two and three 
miles on the north and west, and to the south it 
stretches away solidly. Around this great circle 
birds may be found nesting at many points. Mr. 
Baynard, who visited this rookery in February, 
[912, before the cypress trees had leaved out, 
gave it as his opinion that there were not less 
than seven or eight thousand nests of the wood 
ibis here. Tree after tree bore from twelve to 
twenty or more nests of this species, and in one 
I counted thirty-two. Years ago before the egrets 
and spoonbills 'had become so sadly decimated, for 
they once bred here in large numbers, it must 
have been a spectacle so imposing as to defy an 
adequate description. The egrets, wood ibis and 
spoonbills all nest high up in the cypress trees, 
Phelps. 
very few under fifty feet and many seventy-five 
and eighty feet up. At this season, the middle of 
March, nearly all the nests contained young. A 
few of the wood ibis and egrets were still incu¬ 
bating eggs, but these were more than likely birds 
that had been broken up elsewhere. 
Bird studying in a cypress swamp is not all 
roses, though. It means wading from start to 
finish, anywhere from knee to waist deep, with a 
good chance of hitting unexpected depths at any 
moment. The cypress trees, heavily draped with 
the Florida long moss, or as it is more commonly 
known, “Spanish moss,” stand close together, 
vines cross and recross in the openings, impene¬ 
trable tangles of button-wood force you to turn 
aside. Occasionally one comes upon deep, open 
pools and lagoons covered with lettuce and lily 
pads, with here and there a half-grown alligator 
perking up 'his head. There were big ones in the 
swamp, too, although I never chanced to see one, 
but the bellows that emanated forth on a couple 
of hot nights never came from anything less than 
eleven or twelve foot ’gators. 
Another interesting feature, and one that is 
not likely to slip your mind for any great length 
of time, is the dangerous cotton-mouthed moc¬ 
casin, for he puts in his appearance just about 
often enough and at just about familiar enough 
range to keep one on the qui vive. Wading waist 
deep you come to a nice log and start to climb up 
on to it. You look again, a moccasin is within 
reach of your hand. If he is a small one, he will 
probably slip off the other side, but if he happens 
to be four and a half or five feet long and eight 
or ten inches in girth, he just coils up, opens 
his white mouth, gently quivers his tail and waits. 
You will have 'to kill him or go the other way. 
I visited this rookery a second time the middle 
of April, making the trip across country from 
Immokalee. Large numbers of the young birds 
had now left the nests and many were accom¬ 
panying the old ones to the feeding grounds. In 
the morning the young wood ibis congregated by 
the hundreds in the cypress saplings at the edge 
of the swamp just opposite the camp to enjoy the 
warmth of the early sun. We found one group 
of egrets, about fifty pairs, with fresh nests and 
just beginning the duties of incubation. These 
were undoubtedly new arrivals, remnants of a 
shot-out rookery not far away. 
To illustrate some of the uncertainties of a 
cypress swamp. We were three hours reaching 
this colony of egrets, located less than a mile 
within the swamp, although we had visited the 
same place a month before and presumably knew 
exactly where it was. The trouble arose from 
starting in at a slightly different point and en¬ 
countering a deep lettuce covered lake, in de¬ 
touring around which we got off our course. By 
climbing a tree we got a line on the flight of the 
birds and eventually the croaking of the nestlings 
drew us to the right spot. In going out we 
picked up our old trail and were at the edge of 
the swamp in half an hour. 
This rookery has been under the protection of 
the Audubon Society since 1912. In that year, 
