BIRDS OF KANSAS. 121 



for a favorite branch or place for a nest; while mated, however, 

 the pairs are true to each other, and share alike in the duties of 

 nest building, hatching and rearing the young. The latter is a 

 laborious work, and requires constant labor during the day and 

 way into the night, even where food is abundant, for their 

 growth is rapid and digestive organs great; but when they have 

 only their own appetites to satisfy they generally feed at morn 

 and eve, resting during the day in swampy lands and treetops 

 skirting the waters. 



Their food consists chiefly of fishes, which they usually se- 

 cure by standing motionless in the water, with bill poised, pa- 

 tiently awaiting their near approach, when they are pierced with 

 a rapid stroke of the bill, and quickly swallowed, head fore" 

 most. They also feed on frogs, meadow mice — in fact upon all 

 small forms of digestible life. 



These birds have great strength of wing, and their flight in 

 migration is high and protracted; at other times, unless going a 

 great distance, they flop leisurely along near the water or land. 

 In flight the head is drawn back upon the breast, with legs ex- 

 tended rudder-like, in line with the body. 



Their nests are placed on the branches of high trees, growing 

 upon swampy lands and along the streams; in localities desti- 

 tute of trees, upon bushes, rocks and the ground; in all cases 

 a flat, bulky structure of sticks, lined sparingly with grasses. 

 Eggs three to six, usually four; pale greenish blue; varying 

 somewhat in size; in form, rather elliptical oval. A set of four, 

 taken April 12th, 1881, on an island in Nueces Bay, measure: 

 2.40x1.75, 2.60x1.86, 2.65x1.80, 2.65x1.86. 



Subgenus HERODIAS Boie. 

 "White Herons of large size, and witliout plumes, except in the breeding 

 season, when ornamented simply (in most species) by a long train of straiglit 

 feathers, with thick shafts, and long, sparse, decomposed, slender barbs, which 

 grow from the dorsal region and overhang the tail. Bill moderately slender, 

 the upper and lower outlines almost parallel to near the end, where gently 

 curved, the culmen more abruptly so than the gonys, though the curve is quite 

 gradual. Mental apex reaching a point about midway between the tip of the 

 bill and the eye; malar apex decidedly anterior to the frontal apex, and extend- 

 ing to beneath the posterior end of the nostrils. Toes very long, the middle 

 one about two-thirds the tarsus, the hallux much less than one-half the former. 



