276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



on the watch for it. Therefore, it might be well to recall certain 

 diagnostic field marks which will identify the bird at once. Generally 

 speaking, for the benefit of amateur observers, I should say that the 

 cattle egret looks like a yellow-billed snowy egret. Any really good 

 look at the bird, however, will at once reveal that the beak is short, 

 stout, and stubby, in comparison with the slender and longer black 

 beak of the snowy egret. The entire plimiage is white, with the adult 

 showing the orange-buff on crown, neck, upper breast and back. The 

 legs are dark in the immature, yellowish in the adult. 



Note. — Since the above was written, information of the highest im- 

 portance has been received in connection with the lack of South 

 American breeding records. Rumor reached the writer in an indirect 

 way that the nest had been found on that continent by Richard Bird, 

 of Regina, Saskatchewan. A letter was sent to him, to which he re- 

 plied under date of June 18, 1954, from Banff, Alberta, where he was 

 engaged for the summer. He did not have his notes with him there, 

 but he gave the following information : 



Fi-om memory, it was in 1950 that we [his wife and himself] were in British 

 Guiana and photographed tliese birds in several locations in that British Colony, 

 making both motion pictures and stills of the nesting birds. [Italics are the 

 writer's.] 



As near as we can remember the dates and locations ... it was in May or 

 June and the locations were : some miles up the Berbice River ; on the Demerara 

 River a few miles from Georgetown ; in some marshes a few miles west of George- 

 town ; up the Abary River some miles from the coast ; and a small colony nested 

 In the Botanical Gardens near Georgetown. 



So the distinction of discovering the first known nesting of Biihulcus 

 in South America goes to a Canadian ! Haverschmidt is undoubtedly 

 in possession of the information now, but of course did not have it 

 when he wrote in Audubon Magazine. As he predicted, the nesting 

 locations were away from the coast. 



