ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF A BIRD WARDEN


Only three days before my visit, Green's nearest brother warden on
duty at the Alligator Bay Colony had a desperate rifle battle with four
poachers who, in defiance of law and common decency, attempted to
shoot the egrets which he was paid to guard.
    "The white men who shoot plume birds are the only source of real
 danger to a warden," Green said that evening as we sat by the camp
 fire. "I have sometimes heard panthers about the camp at night, and
 now and then a moccasin or rattlesnake tries to crawl into your blank-
 et with you; but panthers never hurt any one except in story books,
 and if you tuck the bottom of your mosquito bar under your blanket
 all round, the snakes can't get in."
 HEN he told me of the Seminole Indians who often came from
       their hummocks in the everglades in quest of alligator skins
       and bird feathers, and how he must guard against their depre-
 dations. He spoke of the natural enemies with which the birds had
 to contend, of the snakes which swallow the eggs when a heron or
 ibis builds its nest near the ground, and how the alligators are ever
 on the watch to capture the unfortunate young which fall from the
 limbs. Wild cats and minks also take their toll of the rookery, but
 of all the wild creatures the pilfering fish-crow creates the greatest
 havoc in this vast bird assembly by stealing eggs. There was hardly
 a moment of the day but what one or more of these black thieves
 was in sight. They were continually flying into the swamps and
 returning with their booty. The warden said he thought the Audubon
 Society would not approve of his shooting the crows, as he under-
 stood they were really very valuable when it came to eating bugs,
 but for his part he had no use for them. Every time he saw one
 coming from the rookery with an egg on its bill he went after it
 with his shotgun.
   Presently my companion rose to his feet, and taking the bucket
went down to the hole he had dug at the edge of the saw-grass glade
to get some water. "Get out of there," I heard him shout, and upon
returning I learned that he had dipped up a snake in the coffee-colored
fluid which by courtesy passes for water in that country.
   I like to think of Green as I saw him that night, his brown, lean
face aglow with interest as he told of the birds he guarded. The next
day I would leave him, and night after night he would sit there in sol-
itude, a lone representative of the Audubon Society away down there
on the edge of the Big Cypress, standing as best he could between the
lives of the birds he loved and the insatiable greed of Fashion.