4 THE <A U‘DU.B ON’ -BOUlD DD Eanes 
Wilson’s snipe, Florida gallinule, blue-winged teal, shoveller and Florida 
black duck, and the ubiquitous coot. 
As we drove up to the hotel on the evening of the second day, a great 
flock of perhaps 200 wood ibis flew across the road about a mile distant on 
the edge of town. The setting sun rimmed their wings with a golden light. 
“And that,” said Mr. Sprunt with a sweep of his arm, “is a fitting 
farewell to Okeechobee.” 
Next morning five of us hired a taxi-cab to take us to Fort Pierce. Mr. 
Sprunt had told us of a charming little lady, Miss Clara Bates, who had 
painted buntings at her feeding tray. We arrived about nine o’clock in 
the morning, fortunately for us, before she had fed her birds. When. she 
had changed the water in the bath, and scattered the food on the tray and 
on the ground below it, she stood back in the bushes and called the birds. 
Her soft trills and purling throat sounds were as sweet as any bird’s. 
Presently they began to call back to her. One by one they slipped out of 
the underbrush and shrubs. Cardinals and catbirds came first. An oven- 
bird timidly picked up the crumbs farthest under the shrubs and slipped 
back cut of sight. The buntings were long in answering their mistress’ 
calls. We were growing discouraged when the female finally hopped up to 
the edge of the tray. Having let his lady brave the dangers first, and 
having been assured by her that all was well, the male at last appeared. 
Jo color plate can give the slightest conception of this bird’s breath-taking 
beauty. The colors shimmer as though they were alive. After he had fed, 
the gorgeous creature played in the bath while a catbird scolded from a 
nearby branch. 
Back in Okeechobee we went our separate ways. We had a gap of eight 
days between the two trips. I spent the time in Gainesville visiting a friend. 
Here I saw Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Cross Creek country and bird- 
hunted on the Orange Lake she speaks of in her book. On the city limits 
of Gainesville is Paine’s Prairie, the “Alachua Savanna” described in 
Wilham Bartram’s classic “Travels” published in 1791. I spent one de- 
lightful afternoon canoeing around Bivins Arm, a detached portion of 
Paine’s Prairie which is still a lake. It is a protected area used for bio- 
logical observation by the faculty of the University of Florida. A young 
biology professor who lives in the Arm, J. C. Dickinson, was my host. In 
the entertaining book from which I took the title of this article, “Florida, 
That Vanishing Eden,” by Thomas Barbour, director of the Harvard Uni- 
versity Museum, the author speaks several times of the Dickinsons and 
Bivins Arm. Purple gallinules were my big thrill here. We edged the 
canoe into the water-weeds only a few feet from them. There is also in 
the Arm a big rookery of “plume birds,” ibis and water turkeys. 
Meanwhile Mrs. Baldwin was visiting a friend in Sebring, who took her 
to another one of the state’s many sanctuaries — Highland Hammock. She 
also stopped at Clewiston. Here she visited an island out in Lake Okee- 
chobee where Everglade kites are to be seen, and took a long walk along 
the dike above the lake where she looked down on limpkins on their nests. 
We rejoined each other in Miami for the second of the Wildlife Tours. 
