296 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



in great spirals its pursuers rose still faster, 

 until one was above it; and then the tern 

 dropped the fish, which was snatched in mid- 

 air by one of the bandits. Captain Sprinkle 

 had found these frigate-birds breeding on one 

 of the islands the previous year, each nest being 

 placed in a bush and containing two eggs. We 

 visited the island ; the big birds — the old 

 males jet black, the females with white breasts, 

 the young males with white heads — were there 

 in numbers, perched on the bushes, and rising 

 at our approach. But there were no nests, and, 

 although we found one fresh egg, it was evi- 

 dently a case of sporadic laying, having nothing 

 to do with home-building. 



On another island, where we also found a 

 big colony of frigate-birds roosting on the man- 

 grove and Gulf tamarisk scrub, there was a 

 small heronry of the Louisiana heron. The 

 characteristic flimsy heron nests were placed in 

 the thick brush, which was rather taller than a 

 man's head. The young ones had left the 

 nests, but were still too young for anything in 

 the nature of sustained flight. They were, like 

 all young herons, the pictures of forlorn and 

 unlovely inefficiency, as they flapped a few feet 

 away and strove with ungainly awkwardness 

 to balance themselves on the yielding bush 



