Here and there tiny inlets are overhung with undergrowth which supplies
a safe nesting-place to a multitude of birds of many kinds. The surface
of the lake I have never seen free from ducks of one species or another,
and generally of half a dozen. Almost the whole family, if we except the
canvas-back and the red-head, visit it at one or another period. One
item in their bill of fare is the nut of the water-lily, the receptacles
of which, resembling the rose of a watering-pot, dot the shallows in
great quantity. The green, cable-like roots of this plant are afloat,
forming at some points heavy windrows. Some say they are torn up from
the bottom by the alligators; but it is more probable that they are
loosened and broken by the continual tugging of the divers. The
alligators are not vegetarians, and they are not using their snouts much
at this season. The young shoots of the Nymphæa are doubtless tempting
food, as those of the Vallisneria are on the Chesapeake and the North
Carolina sounds. Sustenance may be drawn also from the roots of the
rushes and reeds which cover with their yellow stems and leaves many
acres of the lake, and are thronged now by several species of small
birds.

Hawks, of course, are always in sight, and that in astonishing variety,
from the osprey down to two or three varieties of the sparrow-hawk. A
monograph on the Raptores of Eagle Lake would be a most comprehensive
work. The osprey, notwithstanding the abundance of his scaly prey, is
not common: probably the field is too limited for him. Ducks are the
attraction of the other large species. In summer, ducks are rather
secondary among the water-birds, the ibis, water-turkey, and flamingo
imparting a tropical character to the scene that somewhat obscures the
more familiar forms. There is even a survival here of birds that have
nearly disappeared from the American fauna,--the paroquet, once so
common in the Mississippi Valley as far north as the Ohio, being