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406 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
penetrable swamps, these birds have several heronries, which 
they have inhabited for years. When their haunts are 
approached, the birds rise with a guttural note, like the 
syllable gud, and alight in some tall tree, from which they 
silently watch the intruder. 
The eggs are usually four in number. Their form is 
generally ovoidal, and their color a rich drab, with some- 
times an olive tinge. I know of no species that exhibits so 
little variation in the size of its eggs as this; for in a large 
number of specimens in my collection from half a dozen 
different States, east and west, the only variety of dimen- 
sions is from 1.92 by 1.50 inch to 1.88 by 1.48 inch. 
In the mating season, and during the first part of the 
period of incubation, the male has a peculiar love-note, that 
almost exactly resembles the stroke of a mallet on a stake ; 
something like the syllables ’chunk-a-lunk-chunk, quank- 
chunk-a-lunk-chunk. I have often, when in the forests of 
Northern Maine, been deceived by this note into believing 
that some woodman or settler was in my neighborhood, 
and discovered my mistake only after toiling through swamp 
and morass for perhaps half a mile. But one brood is 
reared in the season by this bird in New England; and, by 
the first week in August, the young are able to shift for 
themselves. 
BUTORIDES, Bryru. 
Butorides, Buy tH (1849), Horsf. (Type Ardea Javanica.) 
Bill acute, rather longer than the head, gently curved from the base above; 
gonys slightly ascending; legs very short; tarsi scarcely longer than the middle 
toe; broadly scutellate anteriorly; lateral toes nearly equal; head with elongated 
feathers above and behind; these are well defined, lanceolate, as are the inter- 
scapulars and scapulars; the latter not exceeding the tertials; neck short; bare 
behind inferiorly; tibia feathered nearly throughout; tail of twelve feathers. 
BUTORIDES VIRESCENS. — Bonaparte. 
The Green Heron; Fly-up-the-Creek. 
Ardea virescens, Linnzeus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 288. Wils. Am. Orn., VII. 
41813) 97. Aud. Orn. Biog., IV. (1838) 274. 
Ardea (botaurus) virescens. Nutt., IJ. (1884) 63. 
Butorides virescens, Bonaparte. Consp. Av., II. (1855) 128. 
