Range.--Tropical America, north in summer to the Gulf States. They formerly nested in remote swamps along the whole Gulf coast, but are now confined chiefly to the Everglades in Florida. [Illustration 117: American Flamingo. Roseate Spoonbill.] [Illustration: right hand margin.] Page 116 This bird, with its broad, flat bill, bare head, and rosy plumage with carmine epaulets and tail coverts, seem more like the fanciful creation of some artist than a real bird of flesh and blood. Its plumage and colors are strikingly clear and beautiful. Full plumaged adult birds have very brilliant carmine shoulders and tail coverts, a saffron colored tail, and a lengthened tuft of bright rosy feathers on the foreneck. This species breed in small colonies in marshy places, often in company with herons and ibises. Their nests are rather frail platforms of sticks, located in bushes or trees, from four to fifteen feet from the ground. The eggs are laid during the latter part of May and June. They are three or four in number and have a ground color of dull white, or pale greenish blue and are quite heavily blotched with several shades of brown. Size 2.50 × 1.70. [Illustration 118: Pale greenish blue.] [Illustration: Chalky bluish white. Egg of American Flamingo.] [Illustration: deco.] [Illustration: left hand margin.] Page 117 IBISES. Family IBIDIDÆ Ibises are gracefully formed birds having a long curved bill and a bare face. 184. WHITE IBIS. _Guara alba._ Range.--This is a tropical and sub-tropical species which is found along the Gulf coast, and north to South Carolina, west to Lower California. These handsome birds are wholly white, with the exception of black primaries. The legs and the bare skin of the face is orange red. These birds are very abundant in most marshy localities along the Gulf coast, especially in Florida, where they nest in rookeries of thousands of individuals. Owing to their not having plumes, they have not been persecuted as have the white herons. They build their nests of sticks and grasses, in the mangroves a few feet above the water. In other localities they build their nests entirely of dead rushes, attaching them to the standing ones a foot or more above the surface of the water. They are quite substantially made and deeply cupped, very different from the nests of the Herons. Their eggs are from three to five in number, vary from grayish ash to pale greenish or bluish in color, blotched with light brown. Size 2.25 × 1.60. The nesting season is during May and June. Data.--Tampa Bay, Fla., June 4, 1895. Three eggs. Nest of sticks and a few weeds in small bushes on an island. Collector, Fred Doane. 185. SCARLET IBIS. _Guara rubra._. Range.--Occasionally, but not recently met with in the southern states. Their habitat is tropical America, they being especially abundant along the Orinoco River in northern South America.