152 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



animal matter, vegetable remains occuring only as rubbish secured with other 

 food and amounting to but 1 per cent. One bird taken near Rio Piedras had 

 eaten two dragon-fly nymphs, a small crab, a lizard, and a small frog. The 

 stomach of the other, secured, near Mameyes, was nearly filled with bones of 

 small gobies, the remainder of the animal food consisting of fragments of flies of 

 the family Dolichopodidae and bits of a grasshopper. In their excursions to 

 drier fields the birds must secure other insects. They feed to a large extent upon 

 fish, but the fishes taken are of no great importance and the birds are not 

 abundant enough to become noxious. 



Behavior. — Perhaps enough has been said above about its attrac- 

 tive behavior in its various lines of activity. In all of its movements 

 it is light, airy, and active. It is very different in appearance and 

 manner of flight from the American egret, besides being very much 

 smaller. It is relatively much shorter and less slender, hence the 

 plume hunter's name, "short white"; its wings are relatively smaller 

 and its wing strokes are much quicker. From the white young of 

 the little blue heron it is not so easily distinguished, unless one is 

 near enough to see the plumes or the black legs and yellow feet of 

 the snowy egret; in the little blue the legs and feet appear wholly 

 dark. Audubon (1840) says: 



While migrating, they fly both by night and by day in loose flocks of from 20 

 to 100 individuals, sometimes arranging themselves in a broad front, then forming 

 lines, and again proceeding in a straggling manner. They keep perfectly silent 

 and move at a height seldom exceeding a hundred yards. Their flight is light, 

 undetermined as it were, yet well sustained and performed by regular flappings, 

 as in other birds of the tribe. When they have arrived at their destination, they 

 often go to considerable distances to feed during the day, regularly returning at 

 the approach of night to their roosts on the low trees and bushes bordering the 

 marshes, swamps, and ponds. They are very gentle at this season, and at all 

 periods keep in flocks when not disturbed. 



Dr. T. Gilbert Pearson (1922) writes: 



At Orange Lake, Fla., they often approach the breeding island, flying at a 

 height of only 4 or 5 feet above the water. When the colonies are in little ponds 

 closely surrounded by high forests the birds must necessarily fly in over the tree- 

 tops and then drop down to their nests. A situation somewhat similar to this 

 exists at Avery Island, La., where Edward A. Mcllhenny, by exercising ingenuity, 

 based on a knowledge of the habits of the birds, has built up a colony of perhaps 

 2,000 nesting snowy egrets almost in his dooryard. Late in the afternoon these 

 and other herons of the colony begin to arrive in numbers. Standing with Mr. 

 Mcllhenny on his lawn I have seen the birds arriving at a height of from 100 to 

 200 feet, until nearly over their nests, then with wings partly closed they vol- 

 planed almost to the bushes. A few vigorous wing beats and they would settle 

 among the assembled hosts. Flocks of these snowy creatures dropping from the 

 sky make a stimulating and most charming spectacle. 



Enemies. — Much that I have already written about the ruthless 

 destruction of the American egret applies with equal or greater force 

 to this smaller species. The Uttle snowy egret was slaughtered in 

 much greater numbers than its larger relative, because it was origin- 

 ally much more numerous and more widely distributed, because it 



