THE EGRET 



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YOUNG EGRETS IN NEST 



the bow with my reflex camera, ready to do a better day's 

 work than did Audubon, when he and the Rev. John Bach- 

 man visited an Egret rookery and killed forty-six of the 

 birds. He quaintly comments, in his great book, that " many 

 more of them might have been killed, but we became tired of 

 shooting them." What wonder! But those were unenlight- 

 ened times, and there was no " camera-hunting." 



Passing the scenes of yesterday, where there were prob- 

 ably a hundred of the egrets and herons breeding, we came in 

 time to the day of larger things. First we met, as we con- 

 tinued to navigate this cypress-sea, scattered nests, with eggs, 

 of the Yellow-crowned Night Heron. Then we began to meet 

 individuals of the familiar Black-crowned Night Heron of the 



