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easily glance around every inch of the rookery and sound a choir-like alarm if a predator was approaching. So on any given day Kroegel saw herons mingling with pelicans while spoonbills clustered only two or three feet away. As a dreamer—unschooled in ornithology—he imagined this patch of Florida as a northward extension of the tropics, and that idea invigorated him. But owing to guano buildup and “big freezes,” particularly the horrific freezes of December 1894 and February 1895, many of the mangroves on Pelican Island had died. With no other options, the birds took to constructing their nests on the ground. Kroegel dutifully recorded in a notebook how this change in nesting affected their hunting habits. But whether the birds were perched high or nesting low, pelican sightings on his beloved islet brought him happiness.

Besides studying birds and farming, Kroegel was a boat builder par excellence. Schooners, skiffs, tall-masted sailboats, yachts, collapsible canoes—he constructed them all. Before long his expertise outclassed that of any other Floridian living within a thirty-mile radius of Sebastian and Wabasso.18 With no major roads in the sandy-soil Sebastian area, save a few heavily rutted swampy paths, boating in the Indian River was still the main mode of transportation as the nineteenth century wound down.* Whenever a fierce wind blew off the Atlantic coast, the people of Sebastian—even those who thought Kroegel’s bird-watching too eccentric—were in full agreement that his boats were sure to survive the coming tempest. His exemplary vessels were—without question—the epitome of nautical craftsmanship. Whenever there was a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean—like that of the Mary Morse in September 1898—Kroegel would rush out to assist the stranded crew. (In that particular disaster he earned $350 for salvaging the cargo of lumber planks.) Meanwhile, Kroegel had studied hard to earn his captain’s papers from the state at age twenty; he was thereafter known as “Captain Paul.”19

Navigating the shallow Indian River Lagoon—still, according to the Audubon Society, considered the most biologically diverse estuary in America20—had become second nature to Kroegel, as much a part of his daily regime as eating, sleeping, and oystering. Kroegel went out patrolling the Indian River Lagoon at midday, when the invigorating ocean breezes brought wind for his sailboat and welcome relief from pesky sand flies and mosquitoes. Salt marshes with the associated mudflats and tidal creeks provided a wealth of food and habitats for fiddler crabs, marsh rabbits, and wading birds. Self-trained in natural history, Kroegel could tell the difference between smooth cordgrass, saltwort, and glasswort at a glance. At nighttime, starlight and the phosphorescence of more than 250 algae species were his illumination as he rowed passed sorrowing cypress.

Starting in 1902, the Florida Audubon Society paid Kroegel a meager wage to patrol the Indian River Lagoon for plumers. He was a conservationist gatekeeper. With his .10-gauge double-barrel shotgun always close at hand, ready to aim, Kroegel was determined to save the approximately 3,000 brown pelicans on Pelican Island from the barbarians. With his sailboat weaving about in a sort of hurried dance, Kroegel began patrolling the lagoon, threatening anybody who dared to disrupt his Indian River rookery. The worst offenders were thugs who sneaked onto the island under cover of darkness. Because the channel was so narrow, all large vessels going up and down the river had to pass within a scant 100 feet of Pelican Island, keeping Kroegel busy. If a boat dared anchor near the island, off Kroegel went, like an arrow shot from a pulled bow.21 According to family lore, Kroegel slept with one eye open; that’s how seriously he took his wildlife protection job.

III

Like Paul Kroegel, and other grassroots activists, Roosevelt had become disgusted that hunters in Florida would shoot a beautiful roseate spoonbill—to name just one species—so unscrupulous shops could sell its gorgeous wings as cooling fans to “snowbird