Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/286

 is a dreamy world to the eastward, full of wild life. In the shallows schools of fishes flash their silvery sides to the sun. Herons wait, patient in the knowledge that the river will serve their dinner. The Florida great blue in all his six-foot magnificence flies with a croak of disapprobation only when you come too near. Here are the smaller blue herons, in family groups. Ardea wardi and Ardea cœrulea are fortunate in having no plumes which are desired of courtesans, else would they, in spite of all law, have been shot off the earth as have the snowy egrets which once whitened the Florida savannas with beauty. Yet both are beautiful birds, and the young of the smaller heron rival the egrets in whiteness. It is rather singular that a bird that is pure white when young should, on reaching full maturity, so change color as to be at first taken by naturalists for another variety, yet such is the case.

Further out in the shining river frolicsome mullet leap six feet in the air, not as most fish do with a curving trajectory that brings them into the water head first, but falling back broadside on the surface with a spanking splash. Often a big fish will progress three times in the air thus as if trying out the hop, skip, and a jump of athletic competitions. Half a thousand feet out in the shallow water are the spiles of abandoned docks. On these sit the cormorants, black and