Deshi pas Uel Usb ON, BU DAL Ber aN iL 
softer colored than ours but beautiful in some lights—robins, sparrow 
hawks, shrikes, bluebirds, palm warblers, brown pelicans, herring and ring- 
billed gulls, royal terns, almost as large as our Caspians and easily identi- 
fied by their yellow bills and generally less black on the primaries and 
deeper forked tails. On the beaches were semi-palmated and piping plover, 
turnstones, and sanderling, and in the water scaup and blue-winged teal, 
pied-billed and horned grebes in winter plumage, and of course boat-tails 
and red-wings. The scaup were quite tame and made themselves at home 
around a waterside restaurant. 
On the 15th a small party consisting of Ed Ford, Sam Harper, Foster 
White, Mr. Close, secretary of the Miami Bird club, and I made an after- 
noon visit to Merritt island, a renowned bird haunt which lived up to its 
reputation. Without going more than a few yards from our cars at various 
stops we saw large numbers of many species. We did not visit the north 
end where the dusky seaside sparrow, which has a very limited range, may 
be seen. Most of the great blue herons had much white on the head and 
rather pale bodies, and were classified by the Florida men as Ward’s heron. 
After seeing many herons grading from a dark slate, darker than those of 
the Chicago area, to the pure white of the great white heron, including one 
which Dr. Eifrig is certain was a Wuerdemann’s heron, which has no black 
head plume, I am in doubt as to these various sub-species. They seem to in- 
tergrade so. On reaching home I saw the little ground dove feeding along- 
side the mourning dove. There is a marked contrast in size. 
On the 14th at the river near our hotel I saw a beautiful parula warbler, 
seeming more brilliant than I have ever seen them in our region, and a tow- 
hee with a brown, not red, iris. The royal terns were diving from about 
double the height generally used by the common tern, and the brown peli- 
cans were throwing themselves sidewise from low altitudes with a great 
splash, and when not straight forward always to the left. I never observed 
one wing over to the right when splashing into the water. I was amused by 
a description I once read of the graceful dive of the brown pelican! 
The 15th was another gala day. We met the Hifrigs and Ekdahls at Co- 
coa Beach. They had driven down from Windermere. On the way there 
were many sparrow hawks on telegraph wires, and on one post a Mississippi 
kite, slightly larger and with a tail entirely dark, who took off in graceful 
flight. He was sighted again over a nearby grove and this time also by Dr. 
Eifrig. Over the water were ring-billed, herring, and Bonaparte’s gulls, Cas- 
pian, royal, and least terns; on the beach least and red-backed sandpipers, 
sanderling, and black-bellied plover; in the “river” blue-winged and green- 
winged teal, shoveler, scaup, red-breasted merganser (female), and flying 
overhead a frigate bird, who looked all black, a new one for my life list. We 
saw a heron that Dr. Eifrig thought was a Wuerdemann’s because of the 
white head and front of throat, but the distance was too great to be sure 
there was no black plume. 
The next event of interest was the visit to Royal Palm park in Ever- 
glades National park. Through the courtesy of Dan Beard, superintendent, 
I met Mr. Dilley, the park naturalist, who took me for a small personally 
