iped out. A successful shooting
trip of plume hunters to the Corkscrew might well net the gunners as
much as five thousand dollars, and in a country where money is scarce
that would mean a magnificent fortune. The warden is fully alive to
this fact, and is ever on the alert. Many of the plume hunters are
desperate men, and he never knows what moment he may need to grasp his
rifle to defend his life in the shadows of the Big Cypress, where
alligators and vultures would make short shrift of his remains.

He remembers, as he goes his rounds among the birds day by day, or lies
in his tent at night, that a {213} little way to the south, on a lonely
sand key, lies buried Guy Bradley, who was done to death by plume
hunters while guarding for the Audubon Society the Cuthbert Egret
Rookery. On Orange Lake, northward, the warden in charge still carries
in his body a bullet from a plume gatherer's gun. Only three days
before my visit Greene'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 decency, attempted to shoot the Egrets
which he was paid to protect.

I like to think of Greene as I saw him the last night in camp, his
brown, lean face aglow with interest as he told me many things about
the birds he guarded. The next day I was to leave him, and night after
night he would sit by his fire, a lonely 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.

{214}

CHAPTER XI

MAKING BIRD SANCTUARIES

The best place to study wild birds is on a reservation, for there birds
have greatly lost their fear of man, and primitive conditions have been
largely restored. In one of the southern sea-bird colonies I have
photographed Royal Terns standing unafraid on the sands not twelve feet
distant. They had become so accustomed to the warden in charge that
they had regained their confidence in man. At Lake Worth I saw a
gentleman feed Scaup Ducks that swam to within two yards of his boat.
In thousands of dooryards throughout the country wild birds, won by
kind treatment, now take their food or drink within a few feet of their
human protectors. The dooryards have become little bird reservations.
I have several {215} friends who regularly feed Chickadees in winter,
perched on their outstretched hands. It