200 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



for many details which space will not permit me to publish. On 

 June 22 and 23 he made a detailed census of the rookery, marking 

 each tree as it was counted and recording the number of nests in each. 

 The count showed 2, 536 nests in 854 trees, the largest number of 

 trees, 282, contained only 1 nest each; and the largest numbers of 

 nests were recorded in 13 trees which held 8 nests each, 5 trees which 

 held 11 nests and 1 tree each which held 13 and 14 nests, respect- 

 tively. 



About 90 per cent of the nests of this colony were built in low pitch pines and 

 the remainder were in scrub oaks, maples, and a few in the bayberry and alder 

 bushes which grew in the lower swampy portions of the grove. The height of 

 the nests varied from one in a bayberry bush 2 feet above the water to one 42 

 feet high in one of the larger pines. The average height of 100 nests, which were 

 carefully measured, was 22 feet, four inches. These nests, unlike those in the 

 spruce groves of Maine were generally located on the forked tips of the large 

 branches and a considerable distance from the main trunk of the tree. 



The nests in this rookery vary greatly in size, stability, and com- 

 position. Many of them are crude, loosely-built platforms, made of 

 coarse sticks, and scantily lined with finer twigs. Some are so small 

 and so insecurely placed that the eggs or young are shaken out of 

 them by heavy winds and the nests are blown out of the trees during 

 the winter storms. Others are large, well-built structures, securely- 

 located in some firm crotch or supported by two or three flat branches; 

 such nests usually survive the winter storms and are used year after 

 year. These better types of nests consist of substantial foundations 

 of sticks and twigs of pine, oak, cedar, beach plum, and bayberry^ 

 lined with fine twigs, roots, vines, grasses, and pine needles. Doctor 

 Gross (1923) says: 



A large percentage of the nests were lined in part or wholly with the long flex- 

 ible roots of beach grass. It puzzled me to know how it were possible for the 

 birds to secure some of the very long roots, some of which were more than a 

 meter in length, until I chanced upon a score of adult herons tugging at the roots 

 which had been left unearthed in the wake of a traveling sand dune. The numei- 

 ous footprints in the sand evidenced that such places were the common source 

 of their supply. The roots provided an unusual but admirable nesting material 

 and some of the nests lined with them represented the finest types built by the 

 herons at Sandy Neck. Both the male and the female actively concern them- 

 selves in the work of building the nest which usually requires from two to five 

 days, but, in the case of one nest, construction work and alterations were going 

 on for a period of more than a week. 



A rookery quite similiar to the Sandy Neck colony, formerly located 

 on Plum Island, Massachusetts, is well described by S. Waldo 

 Bailey (1915). On July 5, 1903,1 examined a fair-sized colony on 

 Chappaquiddic Island, adjoining Martha's Vineyard ; the rookery was 

 located on the highest land in the center of the island in an extensive 

 tract of dry woods, principally black and red oaks with some sassa- 

 fras and beech; the nests were all in the oaks from 7 to 15 feet from 



