Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/234

 feathery fronds seemed just crisping with its flame. And then I looked again, carefully, and took the bird glass from my pocket and focused that on the tree tops as best I might against the crimson glow, for there above the fronded palms stretched a half-dozen or so of long necks with big, keen-pointed beaks set on small heads that topped the necks at right angles. Standing in the palm tops, or perhaps sitting there, were a dozen great Ward's herons. I watched them for some time in their comings and goings, and soon made up my mind that there were many nests there.

I had stumbled upon a Ward's heron rookery and was greatly pleased. Yet so far the stumble was a long-distance one. The island was an eighth of a mile away, and though there are boats on the lagoon, the saw grass grows so dense and divides portions of it off from other portions so definitely and finally, that none were available. You cannot penetrate the saw grass with a boat. I tried wading in it out toward my island, for the lagoon is nowhere deep except in the alligator holes, but only a pretty desperate man would make his way far in the saw grass. The herons flew croaking to and fro to their nests, but I had to be content to watch them with the bird glass.

Some days later I had built a tiny canoe of cotton drilling, stretched over palmetto-stalk ribs,