166 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



showy and those of the white phase must have been in good demand. 

 The following statement by W. E. D. Scott (1887) is of interest in 

 this connection; 



We reached our destination — the island which Mr, Wilkerson had told me was 

 the breeding place of reddish egrets — at about 4 o'clock, and at once came to 

 anchor. A few herons were to be seen from time to time flying to the island, 

 and presently I took the small boat and went ashore to reconnoiter. This had 

 evidently been only a short time before a large rookery. The trees were full of 

 nests, some of which still contained eggs, and hundreds of broken eggs strewed 

 the ground everywhere. Fish crows and both kinds of buzzards were present 

 in great numbers and were rapidly destroying the remaining eggs. I found a 

 huge pile of dead, half decayed birds, lying on the ground which had apparently 

 been killed for a day or two. All of them had the "plumes" taken off with a 

 patch of the skin from the back, and some had the wings cut off; otherwise they 

 were uninjured. I counted over 200 birds treated in this way. The most com- 

 mon species was the reddish egret, though there were about as many Louisiana 

 herons; the other species were the snowy heron, great white egret, and the Uttle 

 blue heron in both phases of plumage. 



In the Texas rookeries considerable damage is done by black vul- 

 tures, which devour large numbers of eggs and young birds. We 

 found one or more pairs of these black rascals living in or near 

 almost every rookery that we visited. The wardens are well aware 

 of the damage that these birds do and they kill them or break up 

 their nests whenever they can. Prowling coyotes and wild cats kill 

 a great many young birds that fall to the ground, but many of these 

 would die anyway, as their parents do not seem to know how to care 

 for them under such circumstances. 



But the worst enemy of all the small herons in Texas is the omni- 

 present great-tailed grackle. These birds hve in multitudes in nearly 

 all of the rookeries and work great havoc among the unguarded eggs. 

 Most of the eggs destroyed are in the incomplete sets, before incuba- 

 tion has begun, as they are less closely guarded at that time. Mr. 

 Cahn (1923) says that "this destruction of the nest causes very little 

 worry to the old birds; indeed I once watched a grackle break up an 

 egret nest while the parent bird stood not 15 feet away, intently 

 watching the performance and preening its feathers." 



Captain Camp has lately been conducting a systematic campaign 

 against the grackles on Green Island which has greatly reduced their 

 numbers and lessened the destruction of eggs. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — Florida and the Gulf coast of the United States; also the 

 West Indies and Mexico. 



Breeding range. — North to Lower California (San Jose Island); 

 Sinaloa (Mazatlan); Texas (Cameron, Nueces, Calhoun, and Refugio 

 Counties) ; Louisiana (Timbalier Island) ; formerly Florida (Suwan- 



