The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-03-12
soUrHEASD's BIRD COLONY.
Florida Visitors Have Free Concerts
 eInfian River. Oranges.

sIndian River. Oranges.
 Especial Cor. N. Y. Evening Post.)
 Coca, Fla.-F1orida in February is certainly a birds paridse in the street before the veranda of the little inn where we are stopping, are four of the pretty little doves of the country, hopping about, picking up something from the ground, whether seeds or in- scots. we are not naturalists enough to determine. The dove Is one of the most delightful and confiding of birds. His lines are as graceful as a clippers. His plumage is q rich, glossy brown, ex- cept that the underside of the wings are tfnged with red, so that when he flies he glows with color. Every feath- CT sets as though oiled, and every move ment Is so graceful that he seems to glide about rather than walk. He is very confiding, as remarked, and does not hesitate to come quite to the steps of the porch where half dozen of us are sitting.
 ' little further up the lane that op- ems opposite the inn two male mocking birds are sparring for positions in one of their numerous encounters--for this delightful songster is one of the most pugnacious of birds. Their heads are down and their tails up as you may have seen two fiery bantam roosters, and every moment or two they spring into the air and strike with their claws like little gameeocks as they are. but after few passes one is put to rout, and the victor returns proudly to the sober suited female, who has been pick ing about as unconcernedly as though she were not the cause of the battle. The mating season is just beginning, and we have incompatible concerts from them now, from orange trees and the thick shrubbery of dooryards.
 Tenants of the Trees.
 The umbrella trees over our heads are we'll tenanted. First red-headed woodpeceker (which an Ohio friend at our eilbow calls a sap-sucker) flies up- on limb, and exambines 1t critically, cireling round and round and tapping 1t with his bill, in search of grub or worm s1lhder the bark. In this tree, too, Is almost always a colony of black birds, the most numerous bird herea- bouts, of two species--the common crow blackbird of the Northern swamps and another, much larger, almost as big as the crow which is called by the natives jaekdaw, and never visits the North A narrow tail almost as long as his body gives him comical ap- pearanee. and indeed he seems the clown of the fehthered family. The redbird and biuebfrd are here also. and our familiar friend the robin, the latter not plentiful in the village, but fiend who visited town some six miles In the interior recently tells Us that he saw them there by hundreds.
 , 4 bird of the Northern woodlands very much in evidence Is the blue jay, whose vivid blue plumage and crested head may be studied at first hand in the dooryards, while his harsh and strt- dent cry is one of the raniiiiar sounds of the village. Both this bird and the crow blackbird frequent the woods and swampy thickets up North, and why they so change their habits on coming south is one of the problems of orni- thoIogy. Of course 1t may be that these individuals never go North at all, but they are exactly like the Northern birds of the same name, while their habits are quite the reverse.
 On the beautiful river road to Rock ledge the other day we saw colony of swallows in mid-a1r, the first we had seen in Florida. The sparrows and .thrushes are here, but the English spar row has not yet arrived.
 1ca is the centre or the famous ln- dian River orange belt, and some two hundred and fifty thousand boxes of the delicious fruit arc shipped from