comb-like arrangement is for the purpose of removing from the bill the sticky 

 down which adheres to it after cleaning its plumage; the claw is passed from 

 the tip of the bill to the base on each side, and any feathers, slime or fish, or 

 adhering dirt is thus removed. The sexes are alike in appearance, except that 

 the male is the largest. 



The range of this heron extends from the Columbia Valley and Venezuela 

 north to Hudson's Bay and Sitka. They are practically gregarious and are 

 altricial. Generally they nest in the tops of trees in swamps or other places near 

 the water and in communities known as heronries. Audubon says that once 

 they have taken possession of a breeding place suited to their taste, they will 

 return to it annually, and repair the old nests until circumstances force them to 

 abandon it. The nests are large and irregularly formed of sticks and lined with 

 smaller twigs. Their structure sometimes is so slight that they tumble to pieces 

 before the young are fit to fly. The eggs, generally four to a clutch, are of an 

 oblong form, larger than those of the domestic hen, and of a light-greenish blue, 

 without an)'- spots. 



Professor W. O. Hendlee, in a very interesting account of a heronry in Rush 

 County, Indiana, says : "Incubation lasts about six weeks, and it is well into 

 summer before the young are able to leave the nest. It is a busy time in the 

 heronry, you may guess, when the young are hatched. They feed on fish. Their 

 principal feeding time is in the afternoon. They place themselves in the shade 

 of a tree by the water, or a drift, or among the reeds and water plants, and 

 patiently wait for their prey, which they seize or impale with their long sharp 

 i,llls." They breed but once in a season, the young are hatched without plumes; 

 these develop gradually with maturity. The young remain on the trees until 

 they are as heavy as the old birds and become extremely fat before they are able 

 to fly. After the breeding season is over the communities break up and they 

 wander about singly or in small flocks, and, as Maurice Thompson says : 

 "Where the water-grass grows ever green 

 On damp cool flats by gentle stream, 

 Still as a ghost and sad mien, 

 With half-closed eye the heron dreams." 



Parkhurst says: "The herons are all alike in the sadly reminiscent, melan- 

 choly air that characterizes them in all their attitudes. The heron is the imper- 

 sonation of gloom, silence and solitude. Loneliness can only be expressed by 

 sentiment life. A deeper sense of desolation is aroused by seeing a water-fowl 

 coursing its solitary flight above the sea, than in the grandest vision of the bound- 

 less deep, unrelieved by even the least appearance of vitality." The flight of 

 the heron is slow and solemn, but grand and stately. Quite frequently I have 

 seen them making their way up and down Fall Creek at Buzzard's Roost and 

 across the country to White River, and vice versa. This occurs generally when 

 the days are cloudy. Occasionally their flight is attended with their quite indes- 

 cribable piercing squawks and cries, and then, according to Indian lore, it is 



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