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About Old Friends and New 
By E. R. Forp 
MOCKING BIRDS have begun at last to put heart into their song, but for 
some time the cardinals have performed brilliantly. There is rather less of 
the “whoit, whoit’”’ element in the Florida cardinal’s phrasing. The Florida 
wren’s song, too, heard occasionally throughout the winter, lacks the “‘tea- 
kettle” motif of the Carolina wren. Speaking of wrens, it is amusing to note 
the furtive manner of the house wren here, in winter, and to recall how he 
brazened it out in the garden last summer, with you and the dog and all 
bird-comers what-so-ever. 
Hardly in the back-yard-chickadee-nuthatch-food-tray group is the little 
blue heron; but in a riverside back yard here where live shrimp is sold for 
bait, there’s a little blue which hops from boat to boat and from post to 
pier to take discarded dead shrimp from the hand of the fishwife. I noticed 
that the bird macerated the crustacean in its beak as some of our small 
passeres do with caterpillars. Always the riverside may be counted upon 
for some bird life, not so much here, however, as nearer the inlets. Cormo- 
rants, nearly all yearlings and probably non-breeding birds, crowd together 
on one end of an islet (the result of some dredging operation) while black 
skimmers herd on an opposite point. A few pelicans and herring gulls, some 
royal and Caspian terns, a company of ring-billed gulls and a black-bellied 
plover or two complete the assembly. When fish crows drop among them, 
they draw aside their garments and scream in their several tongues, ‘‘un- 
clean, unclean’’. 
Shore birds are scarce on the river. There are no extensive flats. 
Killdeer, an occasional spotted sandpiper, a few sanderlings, piping plover 
and least sandpiper occur. These with the black-bellied plover, some turn- 
stones and, once, a western sandpiper make up the list. Ospreys are less 
common here than at points nearer the inlets. Bald eagles are seen from 
time to time. 
I suspected an eagle’s nest toward the northwest and one day walked 
along the railway a mile or more above town. Before long I sighted a great 
nest in a pine. Approaching it, I saw strips of board nailed ladder-wise on 
the trunk and that the nest had not been used this season. Probably the 
new eyrie lay a mile or so farther on in the woods but by this time lassitude, 
induced by the Florida sun, had overcome curiosity. 
Eagles and many other birds have uncertain nesting dates in Florida. 
On Cape Sable, we saw, January 29, an eagle’s nest with the young nearly 
big enough to leave it. On the same day a Florida barred owl’s nest, in one 
of the tall gray cylinders which are the dead trunks of royal palms, con- 
tained young, just hatched. Mr. F. C. Lincoln, who was one of our party 
on the Cape Sable trip, had flown, a day or two before, in the Goodyear 
dirigible over the Okechobee region and had seen yellow-crowned night 
herons’ nests with eggs. Also Bird Lore’s Christmas census from Florida 
Bay reported the species as nesting December 22. April 1 is normal in the 
central part of the state. 
Our splendid state and regional bird books are so remarkably reliable 
that I was surprised to learn for the first time, from Mr. Harold Bailey of 
