Of the other birds along the St. Mark’s railway, let it be enough to mention white-throated and white-crowned sparrows, red-eyed chewinks (the white-eye was not found in the Tallahassee region), a red-bellied woodpecker, two red-shouldered hawks, shrikes, kingbirds, yellow-throated warblers, Maryland yellow-throats, pine warblers, palm warblers,—­which in spite of their name seek their summer homes north of the United States,—­myrtle warblers, now grown scarce, house wrens, summer tanagers, and quails.  The last-named birds, by the way, I had expected to find known as “partridges” at the South, but as a matter of fact I heard that name applied to them only once.  On the St. Augustine road, before breakfast, I met an old negro setting out for his day’s work behind a pair of oxen.  “Taking some good exercise?” he asked, by way of a neighborly greeting; and, not to be less neighborly than he, I responded with some remark about a big shot-gun which occupied a conspicuous place in his cart.  “Oh,” he said, “game is plenty out where we are going, about eight miles, and I take the gun along.”  “What kind of game?” “Well, sir, we may sometimes find a partridge.”  I smiled at the anti-climax, but was glad to hear Bob White honored for once with his Southern title.

A good many of my jaunts took me past the gallinule swamp before mentioned, and almost always I stopped and went near.  It was worth while to hear the poultry cries of the gallinules if nothing more; and often several of the birds would be seen swimming about among the big white lilies and the green tussocks.  Once I discovered one of them sitting upright on a stake,—­a precarious seat, off which he soon tumbled awkwardly into the water.  At another time, on the same stake, sat some dark, strange-looking object.  The opera-glass showed it at once to be a large bird sitting with its back toward me, and holding its wings uplifted in the familiar heraldic, e-pluribus-unum attitude of our American spread-eagle; but even then it was some seconds before I recognized it as an anhinga,—­water turkey,—­though it was a male in full nuptial garb.  I drew nearer and nearer, and meanwhile it turned squarely about,—­a slow and ticklish operation,—­so that its back was presented to the sun; as if it had dried one side of its wings and tail,—­for the latter, too, was fully spread,—­and now would dry the other.  There for some time it sat preening its feathers, with monstrous twistings and untwistings of its snaky neck.  If the chat is a clown, the water turkey would make its fortune as a contortionist.  Finally it rose, circled about till it got well aloft, and then, setting its wings, sailed away southward and vanished, leaving me in a state of wonder as to where it had come from, and whether it was often to be seen in such a place—­perfectly open, close beside the highway, and not far from houses.  I did not expect ever to see another, but the next morning, on my way up the railroad to pay a second visit to the ivory-bill’s swamp, I looked up by chance,—­a brown thrush was singing on the telegraph wire,—­and saw two anhingas soaring overhead, their silvery wings glistening in the sun as they wheeled.  I kept my glass on them till the distance swallowed them up.