The Great Cuthbert Rookery 
haps half grown, clad in suits of buff- 
colored down, with some dark feathers 
sprouting on the wings. It was a fine sub- 
ject for the camera, and I proceeded to 
climb a neighboring tree. As I did so, 
one of the youngsters dropped headlong 
from the nest to the water beneath and 
disappeared from view; I could see it 
swimming off below the surface. An- 
other climbed out among the branches; 
but the two others stayed and let me drive 
my screw-bolt into a branch and set up 
the camera. One of them was. still 
enough, whereas the other little wretch 
kept darting out its neck at me, serpent- 
fashion, making it hard to secure the ex- 
posure of a second’s duration necessary 
there in the shade. This being. done, 
there was another brood of three, just 
beyond, to work upon. The mother 
snake-birds would fly into the network 
of the branches, and leave with a great 
fluttering as soon as they caught sight of 
the intruder. 
A few steps then brought us to the main 
ibis colony, where hundreds were nesting 
in an area of rather low trees growing out 
of the water. Every movement on our 
part caused an uproar of croaking notes 
and a beating of many wings. Especially 
ominous to them seemed the snapping of 
a twig, possibly suggesting the report of 
the small rifle of the plume-hunter, though 
it may have been the mere suddenness of 
the sound. The ibis is a beautiful bird, 
snowy white, save for the black primaries 
and the deep carmine bill and _ legs. 
Though timid, it is not very shy, and I was 
glad to find that if I kept still, sheltering 
myself in the undergrowth, the ibises 
would alight quite near me. It was very 
hard in such a thicket to secure an unob- 
structed view. However, I managed to 
find two fairly good spots, and with the 
telephoto lens secured a number of ibis 
pictures. 
All the nests of these water-birds are 
rude platforms of sticks in some forking 
branch, usually without soft lining. 
Although the nest of the ibises are lied 
with green mangrove leaves, they are the 
most flimsily built nest of any of the birds, 
and hardly do justice to the two or three 
beautifully mottled eggs that they contain. 
Not only were there no young ibises 
hatched in this rookery, but the eggs were 
all fresh, and many of the sets incomplete. 
587 
The other kinds of birds, for the most part, 
had young, and it looked as though these 
ibises might have recently arrived here 
from some devastated rookery elsewhere, 
especially as we found the young ibises 
well grown in another locality. 
Besides man, the fish-crows and buz- 
zards prove troublesome and destructive. 
They were flying about the rookery in con- 
siderable numbers. ‘The crows were es- 
pecially tame, and would follow us about, 
alighting upon the nests that the ibises 
had just left at our approach, to eat the 
eggs. Some would do this on the spot, 
others would be seen flying off with an egg 
impaled upon the bill. For this reason 
I tried not to make more disturbance in 
the rookery than was absolutely necessary. 
While I was among the ibises’ nests, I 
heard a series of harsh rattling grunts, 
whose author I found to be an American 
egret, that flew back and forth over me and 
then alighted in a tree-top to watch. It 
was a most beautiful sight, the tall, slender 
white bird, with long graceful neck, and 
back loaded with elegant ‘‘aigrette”’ plumes 
which drooped down over the wings. 
These are the prize of the plume-hunter, 
and for them this beautiful species and 
others have been reduced to the verge of ex- 
termination. ‘These swamps of southern 
Florida are about the last holding-ground 
of the pitiful remnant. But here was the 
egret’s nest, about fifteen feet up a man- 
grove. In it were three little egrets, 
rather ragged and uncouth in their in- 
cipient white plumage, yet quaint and 
interesting. Not far away were several 
other nests of this species, each containing 
two or three young. One family of them 
were large enough to fly a little, and could 
just flutter from tree to tree and keep out 
of my reach. Another brood of two were 
at the climbing stage, but I managed to 
drive them back to the nest and photo- 
graph them with the Reflex camera, in the 
open sunlight that bathed the tops of the 
mangroves. The eggs of the egret are in 
color a light greenish blue, like most 
herons’ eggs. 
Out near the edge of the island, on the 
very tops of the trees, were the nests of the 
Florida cormorants, rather compact struc- 
tures, but very dirty. Some of them held 
from two to four soiled whitish eggs, but 
in the majority there were small, naked, 
black young, repulsive in appearance. 
