NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 103 



a few birches. I once counted nine ospreys' nests in the trees around 

 its steep shores and found the bulky nest of a pair of northern ravens 

 in the thickest part of the woods. When I first visited it, on June 

 10, 1899, the breeding season was well advanced. Most of the nests 

 contained large young, but at least four nests examined held three, 

 four, or five eggs, probably second layings of pairs that had been 

 robbed previously. The nests were placed in or near the tops of the 

 largest spruces or firs, at heights varying from 30 to 40 feet. They 

 were large flat platforms of large sticks and twigs, only slightly hol- 

 lowed, and smoothly lined with fine twigs; one that I examined was 

 30 inches in diameter and another was 40 inches. There were not 

 over a dozen pairs of herons in this rookery at that time, but when 

 I visited it again on June 20, 1916, the colony had increased to 30 or 

 40 pairs. Many of the nests were in dead trees, which probably had 

 died since the nests were built; the damage done by the birds often 

 kills the trees. I had long known of another colony of 25 or 30 pairs 

 on White Island, east of Deer Isle, which I visited on June 25, 1916. 

 Here the herons were nesting from 40 to 50 feet up in the tops of 

 the tall spruces in a dense forest. The trees and the ground under 

 them was completely wliitewashed with the excrement of the young 

 birds; but, by picking out and climbing to a nest under which 

 the ground was clean, I succeeded in collecting a set of eggs for my 

 companion. 



In Alexander Wilson's (1832) time these herons nested in the prim- 

 eval cedar swamps of New Jersey, which have long since disappeared 

 as virgin forests; referring to their nesting haunts, he says: 



These are generally in the gloomy solitudes of the tallest cedar swamps, where, 

 if unmolested, they continue annually to breed for many years. These swamps 

 are from half a mile to a mile in breadth, and sometimes five or six in length, 

 and appear as if they occupied the former channel of some choked up river, 

 stream, lake, or arm of the sea. The appearance they present to a stranger is 

 singular. A front of tall and perfectly straight trunks, rising to the height of 50 

 or 60 feet without a limb, and crowded in every direction, their tops so closely 

 woven together as to shut out the day, spreading the gloom of a perpetual twi- 

 light below. 



More modern conditions in that region are thus described in some 

 notes sent to me by R. P. Shar])les: 



Down back of Delaware City, near the Delaware & Chesapeake Canal, is a 

 great swamp. It is many hundred acres in extent and is absolutely unfordable 

 and impassable. In places are many trees growing out of the water and down 

 below is a dense thicket shading the mud and ooze. It is such a place as snakes 

 and frogs and slimy things inhabit. Crawfish in immense numbers make their 

 homes in it. But above is a bird paradise, and the thickets and the grasses and 

 the trees are alive with them. In a small patch of maples a colony of great blue 

 herons have built their nests. There were 89 of the nests in the bunch and 35 of 

 them were apparently in use when examined one day, the last of March, 1912. 

 The birds had just begun to lay their eggs and were very wild. Seventeen of 



