A FIRST GLANCE AT THE BIRDS 



In traveling about the shores of San Francisco Bay, or in- 

 deed in any marshy places in the state, you may often see a 

 great, long, slender bird, perched high up on stilts — a solitary 

 blue-gray fisherman, wading about in the pools and intently 

 watching for game. When aroused, he flaps off with a lum- 

 bering flight, his long feet stretched out behind him in lieu of 

 a tail. The bird, often incorrectly called a crane, is the great 

 blue heron. 



Although the herons are waders and spend much of their 

 lives in shallow water, they perch and nest in the trees. The 

 little green heron is a very common species all over the country, 

 and among our other representatives are the black-crowned 

 night heron and the snowy egret. You all know the egrets, 

 for their plumes are in great demand for ladies' bonnets. The 

 plumes of any heron may be used — a handful plucked from 

 the back — a mangled corpse cast aside in the marsh and a 

 nestful of babies crying for the fond mother who will never 

 return to them. It takes but a day of anguish and they are 

 dead; and this is the price paid for the little plumes that wave 

 airily in the bonnets of our maidens and matrons. Methinks 

 no woman ought to be light-hearted adorned with such memen- 

 toes of tragedy, yet the story has been often told and the deco- 

 rations are still worn. 



Let us hurry by the other marsh and shore birds, interesting 

 though they be — the rails (of which some five species are 

 found here), the coots or mud-hens, as they are called by 

 hunters, the wonderful little phalaropes, which look so much 

 like sandpipers and yet swim instead of wade, the avocets and 

 the stilts, the dainty sandpipers, which flash their snowy breasts 

 in the sun as flocks wheel past us flying to their feeding ground 



[13] 



