Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/184

 into the water, about half of the bird going with it. I know by the way he smacked his mandibles that he took in a good-sized fish, probably a mullet, while beneath the surface.

The general color of this bird was a slaty brown, except for his head and whole neck, which was white, not showing even a tinge of any other color. Crossing the narrow strip of island and looking forth upon the sea I saw other pelicans flying in slant-lined flocks just within the breakers. These pelicans wasted no time in humorous antics. They flew in business-like fashion, skimming so low in the hollows of the waves that they sometimes disappeared. They took fish on the dive much as my bachelor friend had; but, whereas he seemed to do it with a schottische movement, there was no antic dance in their motions. They were in dead earnest. They were marked differently from my young friend, too, for these sea hunters were in full breeding plumage, their hind heads and necks being a rich, seal brown. They were hunting menhaden more than a score of miles from the young, being brooded in the grass nests in the big rookery on Pelican Island, and they had no time for humorous antics.

There is no accounting for what birds do. It is the custom, almost universal, in birddom to mate and breed in the spring of the year. Even in the tropics this holds good. The pelicans of