File:Bird lore (1902) (14755264665).jpg

Identifier: birdlore41902nati (find matches)
Title: Bird lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Committee of the Audubon Societies of America National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals National Audubon Society
Subjects: Birds Birds Ornithology
Publisher: New York City : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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are late breeders. It is not improbable that the time oftheir nesting is dependent upon the rainy season, which, in the Bahamas,begins about the middle of May. Consequently we deferred our trip tothe locality previously visited by Mr. Bonhote until the middle of May.Then we anchored our schooner at the mouth of a certain channel, and,loading our small boats with needed supplies, rowed for the better part of aday, pitching our tents toward evening on a low, slightly shelving shorewith a background of dense, scrubby vegetation. Exploration of the sur-rounding country showed that it was regularly frequented by Flamingoes innumbers during the nesting season. Within a radius of a mile no less thaneight groups of nests were discovered. They showed successive stages ofdecay, from the old nests, which had almost disappeared before the actionof the elements, to those which were in an excellent state of preservation *The Ibis, 1881, p. i;j; 1883, p. 307t Nineteenth Century, 1887, p. 886. (177:
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Flamingoes Nests i79 and were doubtless occupied the preceding year. Some were placed amongyoung, others among fully grown mangroves, and one colony, probably-inhabited in 1900, was situated on a sand-bar two hundred yards from thenearest vegetation. All the colonies found contained at least several hun-dred nests, and the one on the sand-bar, by actual count of a measured sec-tion, was composed of 2,000 mud dwellings. What an amazing sight thissettlement must have presented when occupied, with the stately males, asis their habit, standing on guard near their sitting mates! Flamingoes in small flocks containing from three or four to fifty individ-uals were seen in the vicinity, but it remained for Mr. Bonhotes negro as-sistant to discover the spot which had been selected by the birds for a nest-ing site in 1902. Climbing a small palm, an extended view was had of thesurrounding lagoons, sand-bars and bush-grown limestone; and he soon ex-

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