Round and Round They Swept

Out boating in a cypress lagoon, we disturbed an army of wood ibises having their mid-morning nap. Reluctantly they took flight as the most watchful ones among them detected the approach of our punt. All at once the whole company of them, a hundred and fifty at least, burst upon our vision as we glided onward through the flooded woods; and when we came into view the noise of their wings was redoubled as those that still lingered in the trees, where they had all been roosting, sprang suddenly into the air. They were a memorable sight-that army of great birds, almost as big as turkeys, sailing and circling over our heads, their long necks and long legs outstretched, their wide, black-edged pinions gleaming brilliantly white in the bright sun.

Round and round they swept, rising higher and higher above the trees, their wings now flapping powerfully, now rigidly extended, sweeping and swerving in and out in a maze so intricate that collision seemed inevitable. For a little while they seemed to fill the air above the cypress tops, and it was then that the spectacle was most splendid and impressive. But memorable as that moment was, it was not so memorable, I think, as that other moment when suddenly the noise of their broad pinions had quelled all the other sounds of the lagoon. That was a moment never to be forgotten-a moment when I listened to the wildest of wild music.

The wood ibis is not uncommon in the region where I live-the Low Country of South Carolina. In fact, in certain parts of the Low Country it may be seen in hundreds from June to October, while a few birds have even been known to winter here. I have traveled for forty miles or more through salt marshes where ibises were so numerous that there was scarcely a moment when none was in sight; and over large areas of marshland this species, which is generally known hereabouts as gannet, is one of the most familiar of all the marshland birds. Yet it is a bird that no bird-lover ever ranks among common things no matter how abundant it may be. Its great size, its striking and impressive form, its odd and interesting feeding habits, most of all its stateliness when seen in the air and a certain fantastic quality in its appearance when in flight, due mainly to its long neck and king legs and its sharply contrasting white and black plumage-all these things combine to render it a bird of perennial interest.

To me there is another important element of fascination in the wood ibis-the element of wildness. More vividly than any other bird of the marshes and the lagoons, the ibis recalls the glamorous early days of America when the white man's civilization had not yet played havoc with all the larger creatures of the wilderness.