BIRDS. 129 



grayish young about the size of ducks, while at the liead of Glenn 

 Lake, under the glacier, when Mr. Bailey flushed the loon he also 

 saw a group of six geese. A nest was discovered June, 1915, by Mr. 

 Gird on a hummock of an old beaver dam between the two St. Mary 

 Lakes. In 1887 Dr. Grinnell found that the southbound geese reached 

 St. Mary the last of September and were very abundant there all 

 through October, some of them staying into November. 



When we were camped on the Swiftcurrent, a mile below Many 

 Glaciers, early in August, on walking across the horse pasture near 

 sunset one evening, overhead came the stirring honking of geese, the 

 bugle call that in spring sounds the knell of winter and quickens the 

 pulses with its prophecy of spring. Six of the great broad-winged 

 birds came flying abreast through the sky. They were going out to 

 the flats to feed, and after sunset came flying back, disappearing up 

 toward the glaciers. 



While some of the geese winter as far north as British Columbia, 

 others go as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. On the return north 

 this year large flocks passed over Lake ^IcDonald in ISIarch, many 

 of them stopping on the lake, which was then partly frozen over. On 

 April 12, Mr. Bailey saw a pair on the Xorth Fork of the Flathead, 

 at the mouth of Camas Creek, said to have been there for a week or 

 more and supposed to have a nest. Several other pairs were seen 

 and heard along the river above Logging Creek, and they are said to 

 breed habitually along the river. 



Whistling Savan : Olor columhmnus. — During the spring and fall 

 migrations, Mr. Stevenson saj's, whistling swans are seen at the 

 Swiftcurrent lakes almOvSt every year. At Lake McDonald, in April, 

 1918, Mr. Bailey was told that numbers of sw^ans went over the lake 

 in March, and a few stopped in the open water. 



Trumpeter Swan : Olor hiu'cmotov. — Tn October and November, 

 1887, Dr. (irinnell found trumpeter swans — largely young of the 

 year — abundant at the extreme upper end of the Lower St. Mary 

 Lake, and, as he says, '* these, like most of the geese when they started 

 south, were headed in a southwesterh" direction and would thus have 

 crossed the park, it seems safe to include the splendid birds, now prac- 

 tically extinct, in the list of the birds of the park." 



Order HERODIONES: Herons, Bitterns, etc. 

 Family ARDEID^: Herons, Bitterns, etc. 



Bittern: BotauruH lentiginosus. — While the bittern is a bird that is 

 easily overlooked except by the saunterer along quiet streams and the 

 leisurely explorer of moist meadows, sloughs, and marshes, its voice 

 51140"— 18 11 



