Up eee. DeleBsO UNG (BeUi la lek Det NN 9 
We got back to shore without any mishaps more than shower baths, 
though it was getting pretty rough. The real storm did not break until that 
night, however. It was called “a mild tropical disturbance.” 
The other trip, to Lake Okeechobee and its surrounding swamps and 
prairies, was made late in March. The road there (Fla. 26) is new, through 
swamp land, following the canal all the way. We saw a good many water 
birds on the drive up, including the anhinga. There had been one lone old- 
squaw on the canal all winter, but he had gone by now, along with most of 
the scaups. There are always plenty of Florida gallinules and coots, but the 
large fiocks of egrets and herons move into the glades for nesting. 
We started out at eight the next morning. There are two station 
wagons, each carrying six passengers. This first day was the prairie trip, 
which is over sand roads, along a river, and sometimes right out over the 
grass land where the cattle range. There are extra wide tires on the rear 
wheels to pull out of sand, or, after rains, to pull out of mud holes. We 
were fortunate in having dry weather. We wanted especially to see the 
sandhill cranes which nest in the prairie. Their call is distinctive and can 
be heard a long way, so we were all listening when we got into the crane 
country. They stand so still that they are hard to see in the tall grass, but 
we heard them and saw a number quite close. In one of our side runs into a 
pasture a very small calf came running to meet us. The mother, a gaunt, 
long-horned, half wild thing, saw it and came from the other side. Several 
other cows joined her, but the calf turned back to its playmates and the 
mothers circled around until they were between us and their babies. They 
were not a bit friendly acting and I, for one, was glad when we drove back 
to the sand road. 
We stopped at a wooded place farther on where, thanks to the keen eyes 
and ears of our guide, we saw a pileated woodpecker at work. Our wood- 
pecker list just about covered the family: flicker, pileated, red-head (not 
often seen in south Florida), red-bellied, downy, and red-cockaded. The 
hairy was the only one missing from our list. In a big pine grove we saw 
the little brown-headed nuthatch. It was my first. There were also our 
first bluebirds of the year, and a pine warbler gathering nesting material. 
There were plenty of the burrowing owls, always in twos, bobbing outside 
their nesting holes. There were but few warblers, the ones most common 
being parula and yellow-throat, the latter a beautiful little thing not seen in 
the north. The white-eyed vireo was singing his snappy song in every 
wayside thicket. Sparrows were scarce, only savannah, grasshopper and 
swamp. It seemed strange not to hear or see a song sparrow. 
The second day was not so fortunate as the weather was bad and our 
guide was new on that route. We did it over the next day in our own car 
and had better luck. We saw a flock of about 900 glossy ibises. They rose 
from the feeding grounds like a flock of mosquitoes. There were also large 
numbers of wood ibises and white ibises and all the egrets and herons. We 
were close to Lake Okeechobee all day but seldom had a glimpse of it 
because of the huge dikes built around it after the hurricane that swept 
its waters over two towns and the country around. At one of the places 
where we did get to the lake we saw white pelicans and limpkins. The name 
