NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 149 



built wholly of sticks. The birds rose in vast numbers, but without clamor, 

 alighting on the tops of the trees around, and watching the result in silent anxiety. 

 Among them were numbers of the night herons, and two or three purple-headed 

 herons. Great quantities of egg shells lay scattered under the trees, occasioned 

 by the depredations of the crows, who were continually hovering about the place. 

 On one of the nests I found the dead body of the bird itself, half devoured by 

 the hawks, crows, or gulls. She had probably perished in defence of her eggs. 



An entirely different type of nesting was discovered by George 

 B. Sennett (1878), in a marsh colony in Texas which no longer 

 exists; he writes: 



On May 15, 1 was delighted to meet with this, to me, the prettiest of all the herons 

 in the salt marshes where it was breeding in innumerable numbers in company 

 with others of the family. I otained numbers of birds, eggs, and young. It 

 builds a flat nest of rushes, about 8 or 10 inches in diameter, with a depression 

 of about 3 inches, and it is supported by broken-down, living reeds at a height 

 above the water of from 6 inches to 3 feet. The young fresh from the egg are 

 covered well with white down, and when a few days old are very pretty, compared 

 with young herons. When I found them, the young were just hatching, and but 

 few full families were out. 



Similar nesting conditions in the tule marshes around Great Salt 

 Lake have existed for many years; their history has been recorded 

 by the Treganzas (1914) ; I quote from their notes of May 2, 1914, 

 as follows: 



This date found us in the marsh country destined for the rookeries. Within 

 half a mile we noted a number of snowy herons rise at our right, whereupon we 

 immediately secured a boat and set out to make investigation. We nosed into 

 the dense tule growth to moor our boat, and had just started to break our way. 

 With the first crackle of the reeds, head after head was seen to rise, long crane- 

 like necks stretched up for inquiry, pure white birds, and in close proximity an 

 iridescent black one; the ibis with their curved bills looking for all the world like 

 quaint old Jews, lacking but spectacles and a skull cap. Another breaking of 

 reeds and the whole colony rose en masse, a worrying confusion of wings and 

 squawks and dangling legs; and for once we were actually convinced that white 

 was black and black was white, so confounded were heron and ibis. This colony 

 covered an area 20 yards wide by 100 yards long, and contained no less than 

 150 pairs of snowy herons, and about 100 pairs of white-faced glossy ibis. All 

 of the ibis nests and many of the herons' were under construction, while some of 

 the latter contained four to five fresh eggs. Having traversed this portion of 

 the marsh at least once annually, we were surprised to find this new and larger 

 colony, for previous years it contained only ducks and a very small colony of 

 black-crowned night heron. All the nests were constructed of the growing reeds 

 and rushes. Though quite dense, there was little matted down growth of years 

 previous, thus much resembling the site of Black Sloughs, Salt Lake County. 



Mr. Treganza writes to me that a colony which once numbered 

 from 80 to 100 pairs, is now reduced to 50. He mentions also a 

 colony of 50 or 60 pairs in the black sloughs and one of possibly 20 

 or 25 pairs at the mouth of the Jordan River. The other two colo- 

 nies, at the mouth of Bear River and on Bear River Bay, numbered 

 92642— 26t 11 



