102 REPORT OF ^EW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 



ago was in an oak woods, in pin oak trees, 100 to 115 feet high. ^ Mr. 

 Crispin tells me that other nests are placed in white oaks and tulip 

 poplars, and he knows of one colony which breeds in pines. Dr. Wm. 

 E. Hughes- also describes a heronry of this species in pines near 

 Pitman Grove. 



In Alexander Wilson's time they bred in cedar swamps, one rookery 

 which he mentions especially being located near the head of Tuckahoe 

 River, Cape May county. I have not heard of them breeding in this 

 section of late years, and I know of no heronr}^ in the northern part 

 of the State, although Thurber inentions the species as breeding in 

 Morris county. Krider says that they bred on the beach strip of Cape 

 May county, and Mr. Harry G. Parker" describes a small heronry on 

 Seven Mile Beach in 1885, and Mr. Laurent* says a few bred on Five 

 Mile Beach.- For some years past, however, they have not nested on 

 the coast islands. 



There is no more weird spot than one of the rookeries of the Great 

 Blue Heron. They are located in some low, dark wood, flooded with 

 water in the early spring and thick with a tangle of low shrubs and 

 twining smilax, where tall pin oaks rear their tops above the other 

 vegetation, their limbs loaded with the great, bulky nests, whitened by 

 the excrement of the birds, which is also liberally scattered over the 

 ground and shrubbery. Later it is mingled with broken egg shells, 

 feathers and decayed fish, as the activity of the rookery increases with 

 the hatching of the young. 



There are sometimes a dozen nests in one tree, and all around on 

 the branches sit the grotesque birds, craning their long necks and 

 flying about overhead in great anxiety over the intrusion into their 

 privacy. 



It is a pity that the few remaining New Jersey rookeries cannot be 

 left unmolested, but wanton gunners and collectors, who in the name 

 of "science" gather eggs in a way wliich science never sanctioned 

 and always condemned, will eventually exterminate them. Of what 

 possible good to science is the gathering of dozens of egg shells of a 

 bird whose breeding habits have been known and described for a hun- 

 dred years, and whose eggs have been measured over and over again ! 



^ Abst. Proc. D. Y. O. C, II., p. 20. 

 ^ Abst. Proc. D. V. O. C. III., pp. 5 and 11. 

 = O. and O., XI., 1886, p. 140. 

 ^ O. and O., 1892, p. 53. 



Cf. also, W. B. Crispin, Oologist, 1905, p. 101, and E. J. Darlington, Oologist, 

 1903, p. 41. 



